“Nothing for me to do, here,” said Gabriel aloud.  “He’s past all human help, poor chap.  I don’t imagine there can be anybody else in this wreck.  I haven’t seen anybody, and nobody has answered my shouts.  What’s to be done next?”

He pondered a moment, then, looking at the license plate of the machine—­its enamel now half cracked off, but the numbers still legible—­drew out his note-book and pencil and made a memo of the figures.

“Four-six-two-two, N.Y.,” he read, again verifying his numbers.  “That will identify things.  And now—­the quicker I get back on the road again, and reach a telephone at West Point, the better.”

Accordingly, after a brief search through the bushes near at hand, for any other victim—­a search which brought no results—­he set to work once more to climb the cliff above him.

The fire, though still raging, was obviously dying down.  In half an hour, he knew, it would be dead.  There was no use in trying to extinguish it, for gasoline defies water, and no sand was to be had along that rocky river shore.

“Let her burn herself out,” judged Gabriel.  “She can’t do any harm, now.  The road for mine!”

He found the upward path infinitely more difficult than the downward, and was forced to make a long detour and do some hard climbing that left him spent and sweating, before he again approached the gap in the wall.  Pausing here to breathe, a minute or two, he once more peered down at the still-smoking ruin far below.  And, as he stood there all at once he thought he heard a sound not very far away to his right.

A sound—­a groan, a half-inchoate murmur—­a cry!

Instantly his every sense grew keen.  Holding his breath he listened intently.  Was it a cry?  Or had the breeze but swayed one tree limb against another; or did some boatman’s hail, from far across the river, but drift upward to him on the cliff?

“Hello! Hello!” he shouted again.  “Anybody there?”

Once more he listened; and now, once more, he heard the sound—­this time he knew it was a cry for help!

“Where are you?” shouted he, plunging forward along the steep side of the cliff.  “Where?”

No answer, save a groan.

“Coming!  Coming!” he hailed loudly.  Then, guided as it seemed by instinct, almost as much as by the vague direction of the moaning call, he ploughed his way through brush and briar, on rescue bent.

All at once he stopped short in his tracks, wild-eyed, a stammering exclamation on his lips.

“A woman!” he cried.

True.  There, lying as though violently flung, a woman was half-crouched, half-prone behind the roots of a huge maple that leaned out far above a sheer declivity.

He saw torn clothing, through the foliage; a white hand, out-stretched and bleeding; a mass of golden-coppery hair that lay dishevelled on the bed of moss and last autumn’s leaves.