At the end of a few moments, not hearing Frederick's step behind him, he turned around.

The son of Madame Bastien had disappeared.

CHAPTER XXV.

David, bewildered with astonishment, continued to look around him.

At his right extended the fallow ground, across which meandered the road which, with Frederick, he had just followed to arrive at the crest of the hill, and he discovered then for the first time, as he took several steps to the left, that on this side this bend of the ground was cut almost perpendicular, in a length of three or four hundred feet, and hung over a great wood, the highest summits of which reached only to a third of the escarpment.

From the culminating point where he stood, David, commanding the plain a long distance, satisfied himself that Frederick was neither before nor behind him, nor was he on his right; he must then have disappeared suddenly by the escarpment on the left.

David's anguish was insupportable when he thought of Madame Bastien's despair if he should return to her alone. But this inactive terror did not last long. A man of great coolness and of a determination often put to the test in perilous journeys, he had acquired a rapidity of decision which is the only hope of safety in extreme danger.

In a second he made the following argument, acting, so to speak, as he thought:

"Frederick has escaped from me only on the side of the escarpment; he has not thrown himself down this precipice, I would have heard the sound of his falling body as it broke the branches of the great trees I see there below me; he has then descended by some place known to himself; the ground is muddy, I ought to discover his tracks; where he has pa.s.sed I will pa.s.s, he cannot be more than five minutes in advance of me."

David had travelled on foot with Indian tribes in North America, and, more than once in the chase, separated from the main body of his companions in the virgin forests of the New World, he had learned from the Indians with whom he hunted how, by means of rare sagacity and observation, to find those who had disappeared from his sight.

Returning then to the spot where he had first perceived that Frederick had disappeared, David saw in the length of five or six metres, no other than that made by his own steps; but suddenly he recognised Frederick's tracks turning abruptly toward the edge of the escarpment, which they coasted for a little, then disappeared.

David looked down below.

At a distance of about fifteen feet the top of an elm extended its immense arms so far as to touch the steep declivity of the escarpment.

Between the thick foliage of this tree-top and the spot where he was standing, David observed a large cl.u.s.ter of broom, which one could reach by crawling along a wide gap in the clayey soil; there he discovered fresh footprints.

"Frederick succeeded in reaching this tuft of brushwood," said David, taking the same road with as much agility as daring, "and afterward,"

thought he, "suspending himself by the hands, he placed his foot on one of the largest branches at the top of the elm, and from there descended from branch to branch until he reached the foot of the tree."

In David the action accompanied the thought always. In a few minutes he had glided to the top of the tree; a few little branches broken recently, and the erosion of the bark in several spots where Frederick had placed his feet, indicated his pa.s.sage.

When David had slowly descended to the foot of the tree, the thick bed of leaves, detached by the autumn and heaped upon the soil, rendered the exploration of Frederick's path more difficult; but the slight depression of this foliage where he had stepped, and the broken or separated underbrush, very thick in spots he had just crossed, having been carefully noted by David, served to guide him across a vast circ.u.mference. When he came out of this ground he heard a hollow sound, not far distant, but quite startling, which he had not noticed before in the midst of the rustling of branches and dry leaves.

This startling noise was the sound of many waters.

The practised ear of David left him no doubt upon the subject. A horrible idea entered his mind, but his activity and resolution, suspended a moment by fright, received a new and vigorous impulse. The enclosure from which he had just issued bordered on a winding walk where the moist soil still showed the tracks of Frederick's feet. David followed it in great haste, because he perceived by the intervals and position of these tracks that in this spot the young man had been running.

But soon a hard, dry soil, as it was sandy and more elevated, succeeded the soft lowlands, and no more tracks could be seen.

David then found himself in a sort of cross-roads where he could hear distinctly the sound of the Loire, whose waters, swollen to an unusual degree in a few days, roared with fury.

David at once resolved to run straight to the river, guiding himself by its sound, since it was impossible any longer to follow Frederick by his tracks. Full of anguish and concern for the boy's mother,--an anguish all the more intense from the recollection of the farewells addressed to her by Frederick,--he darted across the wood in an easterly direction according to the roar of the river.

At the end of ten minutes, leaving the undergrowth, David ran across a prairie which ended with the bluff of the river. This bluff he cleared in a few bounds.

At his feet he saw an immense sheet of water, yellow, rapid, and foaming, the waves of which broke and died upon the sand.

As far as his view extended, David, panting from his precipitate run, could discover nothing.

Nothing but the other sh.o.r.e of the river drowned in mist.

Nothing but a gray and sullen sky, from which a beating rain began to fall.

Nothing but this muddy stream muttering like distant thunder, and forming toward the west a great curve, above which rose the solid ma.s.s of the forest of Pont Brillant dominated by its immense castle.

Suddenly reduced to enforced inaction, David felt his strong and valiant soul bow beneath the weight of a great despair.

Against this despair he vainly struggled, hoping that perhaps Frederick had not resolved upon this terrible step. He even went so far as to attribute the disappearance of the young man to a schoolboy's trick.

Alas! David did not keep this illusion long; a sudden blast of wind which blew violently along the current of the river brought almost to David's feet, as it rolled and tossed it upon the sand, a cap of blue cloth bound with a little Scotch border, which Frederick had worn that morning.

"Unhappy child!" exclaimed David, his eyes full of tears, "and his mother, his mother! oh, this is terrible!"

Suddenly he heard, above the roar of the waters, and brought by the wind, a long cry of distress.

Remounting at once the bank opposite the wind which brought this cry to his ears, David ran with all his might in the direction of the call.

Suddenly he stopped.

These words, uttered with a heartrending cry, reached his ear:

"My mother! oh, my mother!"

A hundred steps before him, David perceived, almost at the same time, in the middle of the surging waters, the head of Frederick, livid!

frightful! his long hair matted on his temples, his eyes horribly dilated, while his arms, in a last struggle, moved convulsively above the abyss.

Then the preceptor saw no more, save a wider, deeper bubbling in the spot where he had discovered the body.

A light of hope, nevertheless, illumined David's manly face, but feeling the imminence of the peril and the danger of a blind precipitation,--for he had need of all his skill and all his strength, and, too, of all possible freedom from restraint,--he had the self-possession, after having thrown off his coat and vest, to take off his cravat, his stockings, and even his suspenders.

All this was executed with a sort of deliberate quickness which permitted David, while he was removing his garments, to follow with an attentive eye the current of the river, and coolly to calculate how far Frederick would be carried by the current. He calculated correctly. He saw soon, at a little distance, and toward the middle of the river, Frederick's long hair lifted by the waves, and the skirt of his hunting jacket floating on the water.

Then all disappeared again.

The moment had come.

Then David with a firm and sure gaze measured the distance, threw himself in the stream, and began to swim straight to the opposite sh.o.r.e, estimating, and with reason, that in cutting the breadth of the river, keeping count of the drift, he ought to reach the middle of the Loire a little before the current would carry Frederick's body there.

David's foresight made no mistake; he had already gained the middle of the stream when he saw at his left, drifting between two waves, the body of Madame Bastien's son, entirely unconscious.

Seizing Frederick's long hair with one hand, he began to swim with the other hand, and reached the sh.o.r.e by means of the most heroic efforts, tortured every moment with the thought that perhaps, after all, he had rescued only a corpse.

At last he trod upon the sh.o.r.e. Robust and agile, he took the young man in his arms and laid him on the turf, about a hundred steps from the spot where he had left his garments.