The agent again dismounted, and picked up a loose great-coat. Then he ran his eye along the road.
“My God!” he cried, “an accident has happened. Look at the swaying track of the wheels; their horses have bolted with them, and they have all been upset. Come on.”
He vaulted into his saddle as he spoke, and on they went again—Hal’s heart beating almost audibly, in fear that an accident could only be fraught with some frightful and fatal injury to Flora.
They had not proceeded far when the body of the Indian was discovered lifeless upon the roadway. He had been struck with tremendous violence by the arm of a tree, and hurled like lightning to the ground.
It was so evident that he was dead, that neither attempted to dismount, but both pressed on in silence. The agony of Vivian it is impossible to depict—large drops of cold perspiration stood upon his forehead, his features had become livid, and his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth. His breast heaved, and his breath went and came in short spasms—he felt as if he should suffocate. A dreadful presentiment chilled his blood, and made his marrow almost freeze in his bones. He feared to encounter the sight he anticipated to be awaiting him, and yet he felt that his steed seemed only to proceed at too slow a pace.
And now they reached the ruins.
Hal uttered a cry of grief and consternation.
Upon the ground lay the shattered fragments of the carriage; amid the débris of broken wall and dismantled masses of stone were both horses, frightfully lacerated, and bleeding from the desperate wounds inflicted by their terrific collision.
The body of the carriage, which had been forced half through a low, dilapidated archway, appeared to have been, owing to some large blocks of stone on the ground beneath, crushed by the hyperthyrion of the ruined doorway, and compressed to almost half its natural height, the splintered fragments sticking out here and there showing how tremendous had been the collision, how frightful the destruction.
Both men leaped from their saddles in an instant, and fastening their horses hastily at a short distance from the spot—for both animals started and betrayed symptoms of terror, either at the scent of blood or the confusion before them—they hastened to the carriage.