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 or twenty men aboard, well armed; she carried three brass guns; whereas we were but four, unarmed save for our two cutlasses.  And even supposing our party were ten times as large, we could do nothing without means of transport; and the buccaneers could bring their guns to bear upon us if we exposed ourselves to their view, and with the turn of the tide could mock us and sail away.

But on a sudden a thought came to me.  Might we not at least render the departure of the brig impossible?  Though with any force we might gather ’twas hopeless to think of capturing her, if we could but strand her we should at any rate gain time, and maybe bargain with Vetch for the release of the lady.  He would know that he had put himself beyond the pale of mercy if he should be caught, his hope of gaining the estate must be dead; we might work on his fears and the fears of the men with him, and secure our object by paying them a price.