liage
of a shrub, and as I lay there, dazed, I heard a sickening thud far
below me, and guessed that no such friendly obstacle had saved my
poor horse from death.

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. All
that I was conscious of was the fact that Lucy was gone,
irrevocably, as I feared. But by and by order returned to my
confused and gloomy mind, and, observing suddenly that the tide was
running in, and that the breeze was blowing inshore, I felt a
springing of hope within me.

'Twas clear that the brig could not put to sea against both wind
and tide; she must lie where she was for several hours; was it
possible that even now something might be done to rescue Mistress
Lucy? Could we by some means win to the brig and snatch her from
the villainous hands that held her captive? I dashed back to my
companions and put this throbbing question to them. They shook
their heads; we had no boat to convey us to the vessel, nor if we
had could we have overcome the crew by main force. Uncle Moses said
that there were some fifteen