My design, therefore—and D’Hauteville approved it—was to mount our horses, and make direct for the city.
Hard work I had cut out for our poor animals, especially the one that should have to “carry double.” Tough hacks they were, and had done the journey up cleverly enough, but it would stretch all their muscle to take us back before daylight.
Aided by the flashes, we wound our way, amid the trunks of the trees, until at length we came within sight of the pawpaw thicket—easily distinguished by the large oblong leaves of the asiminiers, which had a whitish sheen under the electric light. We hurried forward with joyful anticipation. Once mounted, we should soon get beyond the reach of pursuit.
“Strange the horses do not neigh, or give some sign of their presence! One would have thought our approach would have startled them. But no, there is no whimper, no hoof-stroke; yet we must be close to them now. I never knew of horses remaining so still? What can they be doing? Where are they?”
“Ay, where are they?” echoed D’Hauteville; “surely this is the spot where we left them?”
“Here it certainly was! Yes—here—this is the very sapling to which I fastened my bridle. See! here are their hoof-prints. By Heaven! the horses are gone!”
I uttered this with a full conviction of its truth. There was no room left for doubt. There was the trampled earth where they had stood—there the very tree to which we had tied them. I easily recognised it—for it was the largest in the grove.
Who had taken them away? This was the question that first occurred to us. Some one had been dogging us? Or had it been some one who had come across the animals by accident? The latter supposition was the less probable. Who would have been wandering in the woods on such a night? or even if any one had, what would have taken them into the pawpaw thicket? Ha! a new thought came into my head—perhaps the horses had got loose of themselves?
That was likely enough. Well, we should be able to tell as soon as the lightning flashed again, whether they had set themselves free; or whether some human hand had undone the knotted bridles. We stood by the tree waiting for the light. It did not tarry long; and when it came it enabled us to solve the doubt. My conjecture was correct; the horses had freed themselves. The broken branches told the tale. Something—the lightning—or more likely a prowling wild beast, had stampeded them; and they had broken off into the woods.
We now reproached ourselves for having so negligently fastened them—for having tied them to a branch of the asiminier, whose soft succulent wood possesses scarcely the toughness of an ordinary herbaceous plant. I was rather pleased at the discovery that the animals had freed themselves. There was a hope they had not strayed far. We might yet find them near at hand, with trailing bridles, cropping the grass.