Before he had been twenty minutes out of sight Jessie drove up to within a few rods of the ditch, and sped across the intervening space. Her coachman warned her not to go thither. "You'll be blown away, missy," he cried, despairingly. "Dis yer am a hurricane, and de hosses can't stan' it much longer."
But, if she heard him, she paid no attention. In a few moments she had crossed the narrow planks, which, bedded though they were in the earth, trembled at the assaults of the wind. She had no more than vanished among the trees around the cabin when the tide, rushing in renewed volumes through the ditch, swept away the frail bridge as if it had been straw. The banks began to crumble; and the coachman, barely able to guide his horses, whipped up and drove away as well as he could, in search of aid.
Dennie got over the ground with marvellous rapidity, taking the shortest line for the swamp. The wind was blowing inland, and bore him along with it; so, when he had gone two thirds of the way, it seemed to him that but a few minutes had elapsed. He was on the regular road, now; but it was providential, nevertheless, that he should encounter in that spot another man. He hailed him loudly, amid the howling of the wind; and the man, turning round, proved to be Lance! He, too, was on his way to the swamp. Going forth aimlessly, he had made up his mind to join Sylv, if he could find him, in the proposed expedition. Alarmed by the prodigious force of the tempest, however, he would have turned back and endeavored to regain the manor, if he had not met Dennie.
A few hasty words gave him knowledge of the threatened catastrophe; and the two men joined forces in the forlorn attempt to find Sylv and prevent his self-destruction.
Dennie knew where a boat could be had to launch upon the devious river that ran through the swamp; and, fortunately, it turned out that Sylv had not taken this boat for himself.
Together they entered the gloomy jungle. They not only plunged into the desperate undertaking of trying to save the life of another man, who had resorted to this convenient cover with the evident purpose of never emerging thence, but they also engaged in a struggle which, for themselves, was very like a life-and-death matter.