But it seemed to him that, from under the jumbled wreckage of the blazing machine, something protruded, something that suggested a human form, horribly mangled.
"Here's where I go down this cliff, whatever happens!" decided Gabriel.
And, acting on the instant, he began swinging himself down from tree to bush, from shrub to tuft of grass, clinging wherever handhold or foothold offered, digging his stout boots into every cleft and cranny of the precipice.
The height could not have been less than a hundred and fifty feet.

By dint of wonderful strength and agility, and at the momentary risk of falling, himself, to almost certain death, Gabriel descended in less than ten minutes.

The last quarter of the distance he practically fell, sliding at a tremendous rate, with boulders and loose earth cascading all about him in a shower.
He landed close by the flaming ruin.
"Lucky this isn't in the autumn, in the dry season!" thought he, as he approached.

"If it were, this whole cliff-side, and the woods beyond, would be a roaring furnace.

Some forest-fire, all right, if the woods weren't wet and full of sap!" Parting the brush, he made his way as close to the car as the intense heat would let him.