As we neared the camp we could see no one. Just as we pulled up to the landing-place, however, we heard a voice cry out,—“Help! help!—bear a hand, or they’ll be away.” We eagerly leaped on shore, when the spectacle which met our eyes made us very anxious. One of our men lay on the ground, apparently dead; and not far off was the other, bound to the trunk of a tree so that he could move neither hands nor feet. “There! there!” he cried. “Stop them!”
Too anxious about my mother and Edith and Pierce to attend to him, or to understand clearly what he said, I rushed to the door of our cottage. It was closed. I knocked loudly. “Mother! mother!—let me in; we’ve come to your assistance,” I exclaimed. She did not reply; but I heard some one moving, and presently the door opened and Dicky Popo appeared.
“O massa! so glad you come, or dey murder us all,” he exclaimed.
“But my mother—where is she?” I asked.
“She in her room, I tink; but no speakee,” answered Popo.
“Mother! mother!—where are you?” I cried out.
The door of her room was also closed; but rushing against it, with the aid of Dicky I burst it open. My mother lay on the ground. A horrible feeling came over me,—I thought she was shot. On bending down I could discover no wound, and I found that she still breathed, so I trusted that she had only fainted. I sprinkled her face with water, and she shortly after heaved a sigh and opened her eyes. On seeing me she revived, and with Popo’s assistance I lifted her up and placed her in a chair.
“Is it a hideous dream?” she asked; “or have the bushrangers really been here? And where are Edith and Pierce?”
“There is nothing now to be alarmed about, mother,” I answered. “The bushrangers have gone away, and Edith and Pierce are probably hiding somewhere.”
“Oh! go and look for them,” she said, “and bring them here at once. I am afraid that those terrible men have carried them off.”