Jack had just time to saddle and mount his horse before the police caught sight of him, and started after him at full speed.
They hunted him into a narrow glen; a single cattletrack, not a foot broad, led on between a swollen rocky creek, utterly impassable by horse or man, and a lofty precipice of loose broken slate, on which one would have thought a goat could not have found a footing.

The young police lieutenant had done his work well, and sent a trooper round to head him, so that Jack found himself between the devil and the deep sea.

A tall armed trooper stood in front of him, behind was the lieutenant, on the right of the creek, and on the left the precipice.
They called out to him to surrender; but, giving one look before and behind, and seeing escape was hopeless, he hesitated not a moment, but put his horse at the cliff, and clambered up, rolling down tons of loose slate in his course.

The lieutenant shut his eyes, expecting to see horse and man roll down into the creek, and only opened them in time to see Jack stand for a moment on the summit against the sky, and then disappear.
He disappeared over the top of the cliff, and so he was lost to the ken of white men for the space of four years.

His sister and brother-in-law mourned for him as dead, and mourned sincerely, for they and all who knew him liked him well.