It will be remembered, that the
sagacity of the old man, which, from long practice in similar scenes,
amounted nearly to an instinct in all cases of sudden danger, had
first induced him to take this course, as it placed the hill between
them and the approaching party. Favoured by this circumstance, he
succeeded in reaching the bushes in sufficient time and Paul Hover had
just hurried the breathless Ellen into the tangled bush, as Ishmael
gained the summit of the rock, in the manner already described, where
he stood like a man momentarily bereft of sense, gazing at the
confusion which had been created among his chattels, or at his gagged
and bound children, who had been safely bestowed, by the forethought
of the bee-hunter, under the cover of a bark roof, in a sort of
irregular pile. A long rifle would have thrown a bullet from the
height, on which the squatter now stood, into the very cover where the
fugitives, who had wrought all this mischief, were clustered.
The trapper was the first to speak, as the man on whose intelligence
and experience they all depended for counsel, after running his eye
over the different individuals who gathered about him, in order to see
that none were missing.
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