WE ARE LOST
The two girls, still clasping hands, looked into each other's eyes.
Gypsy was very pale.
_"Then we are lost!"_
"Yes."
Joy broke into a sort of sobbing cry. Gypsy squeezed her hand very
tightly, with quivering lips.
"It's all my fault. I thought I knew. Oh, Joy, I'm so sorry!"
She expected Joy to burst forth in a torrent of reproaches; once it
would have been so; but for some reason, Joy did not say an angry word.
She only sobbed away quietly, clutching at Gypsy's hand as if she were
very much frightened. She was frightened thoroughly. The scene was
enough to terrify a far less timid child than Joy.
It was now quite dark. Over in the west a faint, ghostly gleam of light
still lingered, seen dimly through the trees; but it only made the utter
blackness of the great forest-shadows more horrible. The huge trunks of
the pines and maples towered up, up--they could scarcely see how far,
grim, and gloomy and silent; here and there a dead branch thrust itself
out against the sky, in that hideous likeness to a fleshless hand which
night and darkness always lend to them. Even Gypsy, though she had been
in the woods many times at night before, shuddered as she stood looking
up. A queer thought came to her, of an old fable she had sometime read
in Tom's mythology; a fable of some huge Titans, angry and fierce, who
tried to climb into heaven; there was just that look about the trees. It
was very still. The birds were in their nests, their singing done. From
far away in some distant swamp came the monotonous, mournful chant of
the frogs--a dreary sound enough, heard in a safe and warm and lighted
home; unspeakably ugly if one is lost in a desolate forest.
Now and then a startled squirrel dropped from bough to bough; or there
was the stealthy, sickening rustle of an unseen snake among the fallen
leaves. From somewhere, too, where precipices that they could not find
dashed downwards into damp gullies, cold, clinging mists were rising.
"To stay here all night!" sobbed Joy, "Oh Gypsy, Gypsy!"
Gypsy was a brave, sensible girl, and after that first moment of horror
when she stood looking up at the trees, her courage and her wits came
back to her.
"I don't believe we shall have to stay here all night," speaking in a
decided, womanly way, a little of the way her mother had in a
difficulty.
"They are all over the mountain hunting for us now. They'll find us
before long, I know. Besides, if they didn't, we could sit down in a dry
place somewhere, and wait till morning; there wouldn't anything hurt us.
Oh, you brought your waterproof--good! Put it on and button it up
tight."
Joy had the cloak folded over her arm. She did passively as Gypsy told
her. When it was all buttoned, she suddenly remembered that Gypsy wore
only her thin, nankeen sack, and she offered to share it with her.
"No," said Gypsy, "I don't want it. Wrap it around your throat as warm
as you can. I got you into this scrape, and now I'm going to take care
of you. Now let's halloa."
And halloa they did, to the best of their ability; Joy in her feeble,
frightened way, Gypsy in loud shouts, and strong, like a boy's. But
there was no answer. They called again and again; they stopped after
each cry, with breath held in, and head bent to listen. Nothing was to
be heard but the frogs and the squirrels and the gliding snakes.
Joy broke out into fresh sobs.
"Well, it's no use to stand here any longer," said Gypsy; "let's run
on."
"Run where? You don't know which way. What shall we do, what _shall_ we
do?"
"We'll go this way--we haven't tried it at all. I shouldn't wonder a
bit if the path were right over there where it looks so black. Besides,
we shall hear them calling for us."
Ah, if there had been anybody to tell them! In precisely the other
direction, the picnic party, roused and frightened, were searching every
thicket, and shouting their names at every ravine. Each step the girls
took now sent them so much further away from help.
While they were running on, still hand in hand, Joy heard the most
remarkable sound. It was a laugh from Gypsy--actually a soft, merry
laugh, breaking out like music on the night air, in the dreary place.
"Why, Gypsy Breynton! What can you find to laugh at, I should like to
know?" said Joy, provoked enough to stop crying at very short notice.
"Oh, dear, I really can't help it," apologized Gypsy, choking down the
offending mirth; "but I was thinking--I couldn't help it, Joy, now,
possibly--how mad Francis Rowe will be to think he's got to stop and
help hunt us up!"
"I wonder what that black thing is ahead of us," said Joy, presently.
They were still running on together, but their hands were not joined
just at that moment. Joy was a little in advance.
"I'm sure I don't know," said Gypsy, eyeing it intently. The words were
scarcely off from her lips before she cried out with a loud cry, and
sprang forward, clutching at Joy's dress.
She was too late.
Joy tripped over a mass of briars, fell, rolled heavily--not over upon
the ground, but _off_. Off into horrible, utter darkness. Down, with
outstretched hands and one long shriek.
Gypsy stood as if someone had charmed her into a marble statue, her
hands thrown above her head, her eyes peering into the blank darkness
below.
She stood so for one instant only; then she did what only wild,
impulsive Gypsy would have done. She went directly down after Joy,
clinging with her hands and feet to the side of the cliff; slipping,
rolling, getting to her feet again, tearing her clothes, her hands, her
arms--down like a ball, bounding, bouncing, blinded, bewildered.
If it had been four hundred feet, there is no doubt she would have gone
just the same. It proved to be only ten, and she landed somewhere on a
patch of soft grass, except for her scratches and a bruise or two, quite
unhurt.
Something lay here beside her, flat upon the ground. It was Joy. She lay
perfectly still.
A horrible fear came over Gypsy. She crept up on her hands and knees,
trying to see her lace through the dark, and just then Joy moaned
faintly. Gypsy's heart gave a great thump. In that moment, in the moment
of that horrible fear and that great relief, Gypsy knew for the first
time that she loved Joy, and how much.
"It's my ankle," moaned Joy; "it must be broken--I know it's broken."
It was not broken, but very badly sprained.
"Can you stand on it?" asked Gypsy, her face almost as pale as Joy's.
Joy tried to get to her feet, but fell heavily, with a cry of pain.
Gypsy looked around her with dismay. Above, the ten feet of rock shot
steeply; across the gully towered a high, dark wall; at each end,
shelving stones were piled upon each other. They had fallen into a sort
of unroofed cave,--a hollow, shut in completely and impassably.
Impassably to Joy; there could be no doubt about that. To leave her
there alone was out of the question. There was but one thing to be done;
there was no alternative.
"We must stay here all night," said Gypsy, slowly. She had scarcely
finished her sentence when she sprang up, her lips parted and white.
"Joy, see, see! what is that?"
"What? Where?" asked Joy between her sobs.
"There! _isn't that smoke_?"
A distinct, crackling sound answered her, as of something fiercely
licking up the dead leaves and twigs,--a fearful sound to hear in a
great forest. At the same instant a white cloud of smoke puffed down
almost into their faces. Before they had time to stir or cry out, a
great jet of yellow flame shot up on the edge of the cliff, glared far
into the shadow of the forest, lighted up the ravine with an awful
brightness.
_The mountain was on fire._
Gypsy sat for the instant without speaking or moving. She seemed to
herself to have no words to say, no power of motion. She knew far better
than Joy what those five words meant. A dim remembrance came to
her--and it was horrible that it should come to her just then--of
something she had seen when she was a very little girl, and never
forgotten, and never would forget. A mountain burning for weeks, and a
woman lost on it; all the town turned out in an agony of search; the
fires out one day, and a slow procession winding down the blank, charred
slope, bearing something closely covered, that no one looked upon.
She sprang up in an agony of terror.
"Oh, Joy, _can't_ you walk? We shall die here! We shall be burned to
death!"
At that moment a flaming branch fell hissing into a little pool at the
bottom of the gully. It passed so near them that it singed a lock of
Gypsy's hair.
Joy crawled to her feet, fell, crawled up again, fell again.
Gypsy seized her in both arms, and dragged her across the gully. Joy was
taller than herself, and nearly as heavy. How she did it she never knew.
Terror gave her a flash of that sort of strength which we sometimes find
among the insane.
She laid Joy down in a corner of the ravine the furthest removed from
the fire; she could not have carried her another inch. Above and all
around towered and frowned the rocks; there was not so much as a crevice
opening between them; there was not a spot that Joy could climb. Across,
the great tongues of flame tossed themselves into the air, and glared
awfully against the sky, which was dark with hurrying clouds. The
underbrush was all on fire; two huge pine trees were ablaze, their
branches shooting off hotly now and then like rockets.
_When those trees fell they would fall into the ravine._
Gypsy sat down and covered her face.
Little did Mr. Francis Rowe think what he had done, when, strolling
along by the ravine at twilight, he threw down his half-burnt cigar:
threw it down and walked away whistling, and has probably never thought
of it from that day to this.
Gypsy sat there with her hands before her face, and she sat very still.
She understood in that moment what was coming to her and to Joy. Yes, to
her as well as to Joy; for she would not leave Joy to die alone. It
would be an easy thing for her to climb the cliffs; she was agile,
fearless, as used to the mountains as a young chamois, and the ascent,
as I said, though steep, was not high. Once out of that gully where
death was certain, she would have at least a chance of life. The fire if
not checked would spread rapidly, would chase her down the mountain. But
that she could escape it she thought was probable, if not sure. And life
was so sweet, so dear. And her mother--poor mother, waiting at home,
and looking and longing for her!
Gypsy gave a great gulp; there was such a pain in her throat it seemed
as if it would strangle her. But should she leave Joy, crippled and
helpless, to die alone in this horrible place? Should she do it? No, it
was through her careless fault that they had been brought into it. She
would stay with Joy.
"I don't see as we can do anything," she said, raising her head.
"Shall we be burned to death?" shrieked Joy. "Gypsy, Gypsy, shall we be
burned to death?"
A huge, hot branch flew into the gully while she spoke, hissing as the
other had done, into the pool. The glare shot deeper and redder into the
forest, and the great trees writhed in the flames like human things.
The two girls caught each other's hands. To die--to die so horribly!
One moment to be sitting there, well and strong, so full of warm, young
life; the next to lie buried in a hideous tangle of fallen, flaming
trunks, their bodies consuming to a little heap of ashes that the wind
would blow away to-morrow morning; their souls--where?
"I wish I'd said my prayers every day," sobbed Joy, weakly. "I wish I'd
been a good girl!"
"Let's say them now, Joy. Let's ask Him to stop the fire. If He can't,
maybe He'll let us go to heaven anyway."
So Gypsy knelt down on the rocks that were becoming hot now to the
touch, and began the first words that came to her:--"Our Father which
art in Heaven," and faltered in them, sobbing, and began again, and went
through somehow to the end.
After that, they were still a moment.
"Joy," said Gypsy then, faintly, "I've been real ugly to you since
you've been at our house."
"I've scolded you, too, a lot, and made fun of your things. I wish I
hadn't."
"If we could only get out of here, I'd never be cross to you as long as
ever I live, and I wish you'd please to forgive me."
"I will if--if you'll forgive me, you know. Oh, Gypsy, it's growing so
hot over here!"
"Kiss me, Joy."
They kissed each other through their sobs.
"Mother's in the parlor now, watching for us, and Tom and--"
Gypsy's sentence was never finished. There was a great blazing and
crackling, and one of the trees fell, swooping down with a crash. It
fell _across_ the ravine, lying there, a bridge of flame, and lighting
the underbrush upon the opposite side. One tree stood yet. That would
fall, when it fell, directly into the corner of the gully where the
girls were crouched up against the rocks. And then Joy remembered what
in her terror she had not thought of before.
"Gypsy, _you_ can climb! don't stay here with me. What are you staying
for?"
"You needn't talk about that," said Gypsy, with faltering voice; "if it
hadn't been for me you wouldn't be here. I'm not going to sneak off and
leave you,--not any such thing!"
Whether Gypsy would have kept this resolve--and very like Gypsy it was,
to make it--when the flames were actually upon her; whether, indeed,
she ought to have kept it, are questions open to discussion. Something
happened just then that saved the trouble of deciding. It was nothing
but a clap of thunder, to be sure, but I wonder if you have any idea how
it sounded to those two girls.
It was a tremendous peal, and it was followed by a fierce
lightning-flash and a second peal, and then by something that the girls
stretched out their arms to with a great cry, as if it had been an angel
from heaven. A shower almost like the bursting of a cloud,--great,
pelting drops, hissing down upon the flaming tree; it seemed like a
solid sheet of water; as if the very flood-gates of heaven were open.
The cruel fire hissed and sputtered, and shot up in angry jets, and died
in puffs of sullen smoke; the glaring bridge blackened slowly; the
pine-tree, swayed by the sudden winds, fell _into_ the forest, and the
ravine was safe. The flames, though not quenched,--it might take hours
to do that,--were thoroughly checked.
And who was that with white, set face, and outstretched hands, springing
over the smoking logs, leaping down into the ravine?
"Oh, Tom, Tom! Oh, father, here we are!"