The marauders had taken warning, and were coming out in mass.
But my own eyes were fixed on the tree.

Almost as a thunderbolt falls fell the giant body of the Gospodar, his size lost in the immensity of his surroundings.

He fell in a series of jerks, as he kept clutching the trailing beech-branches whilst they lasted, and then other lesser verdure growing out from the fissures in the rock after the lengthening branches had with all their elasticity reached their last point.
At length--for though this all took place in a very few seconds the gravity of the crisis prolonged them immeasurably--there came a large space of rock some three times his own length.

He did not pause, but swung himself to one side, so that he should fall close to the Voivodin and her guards.

These men did not seem to notice, for their attention was fixed on the wood whence they expected their messenger to signal.