Barring the shock, and a few scratches, I was unhurt, and with
great thankfulness of heart for my merciful deliverance I crawled
carefully out of the shrub, and set to scrambling up the steep
slope to the top. There I met Cludde pale and shaking with horror.
My involuntary cry as I fell had warned him. He reined up in time
to escape my mishap, and hearing shortly afterwards the thud as the
horse came to the bottom, he believed that I must be a mangled
corpse.
"Too late!" he gasped, clutching me by the arm and pointing down to
the sea.
Clear in the moonlight lay the dark shape of a brig with bare
yards. At that very moment a boat was drawing in under her quarter,
and as we stood helpless there we saw a cradle let down over the
side, a form placed in it and hoisted to the deck, and then the
boat's crew mounting one by one.
'Twas not until Uncle Moses came up with Joe that we found the
circuitous path by which Vetch had reached the shore. We raced
down, but Vetch, you may be sure, had left no boat in which we
might follow him. We came upon his horse, quietly cropping the
plants that grew at the foot of the cliff. The moon shining
seawards, we were in shadow, so that had Vetch been looking from
the brig, he would not have seen me as I raged up and down in
impotent fury, nor my companions as they sat themselves down,
troubled, like myself, but not with the same yearning.
My grief and rage bereft me for a time of all power of thought.
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