back and fling
his arms about him.

"Cudjo shot! Cudjo die! But you go too, Sile Ropes!"

As he gibbered forth these words, his long hands found the lieutenant's
throat, and tightened upon it. A fearfully quiet moment ensued; then
living and dying rolled together from the ledge, and dropped into the
chasm. They struck the body of the dead Hans; that broke the fall; and
Cudjo was beneath his victim. Ropes, stunned only, struggled to rise;
but, held in that deadly embrace, he only succeeded in rolling himself
down the embankment, Cudjo accompanying. The stream flowed beneath,
black, with scarce a murmur. Silas neither saw nor heard it; but,
continuing to struggle, and so continuing to roll, he reached the verge
of the rocks, and fell with a splash into the current.

Penn ran to the spot just in time to see the two bodies disappear
together; the dying Cudjo and the drowning Silas sinking as one, and
drifting away into the cavernous darkness of the subterranean river.

XLIV.

_HOW AUGUSTUS FINALLY PROPOSED._

After this there was a lull; and Penn, who had forgotten every thing
else whilst the conflict was raging, remembered that he had seen
Bythewood at the ravine, and hastened to inform Pomp of the
circumstance.

The death of Cudjo had plunged Pomp into a fit of stern, sad reverie.
His surgical task performed, he stood leaning on his rifle, gazing
abstractedly at the darkly gliding waves, when Penn's communication
roused him.

"Ha!" said he, with a slight start. "We must look to that! The danger
here is over for the present, and two or three of us can be spared."

"Shall I go, too?" said Carl. "It is time I vas seeing to my prisoner."

"Come," said Pomp. And the three set out to return.

Having but slight anticipations of trouble from the side of the ravine,
they came suddenly, wholly unprepared, upon a scene which filled them
with horror and amazement.

The prisoner, as we know, had fled. We left him on his way back to the
cave with a squad of men. Since which time, this is what had occurred.

The assailants had approached so stealthily over the ledges, below which
Toby was stationed, looking intently for them in another direction, that
he had no suspicions of their coming until they suddenly dropped upon
him as from the clouds. He had no time to run for his axe; and he had
scarcely given the alarm when he was overpowered, knocked down, and
rolled out of the way off the rocks.

The assailants th