Saxe stood now paralysed with horror, and it was not until Dale had
shaken him twice that his fixed, wild manner began to pass off.
"Stop here," cried Dale: "you are too much unnerved to come."
"Where--where are you going?" cried the lad; and before an answer could
be given, he cried: "Yes; yes, go on: I'm ready."
"I tell you that you are too much unnerved to venture!" cried Dale
angrily. "Am I to lose you both?"
He turned and hurried out of sight; but he had not gone fifty yards
along the narrow ledge into the gloomy crack before he heard a hoarse
sound, and turning sharply back, there was Saxe close behind.
"Don't send me back," cried the lad: "I can't stand here doing nothing.
I must come and help."
"Come, then!" shouted Dale, his voice sounding smothered and weak in the
echoing rush of the waters, which glided in at the funnel-like opening
smooth and glassy, now leaped forward and roared as they careered madly
along, leaping up and licking at the rugged but smoothly polished walls,
charging into cracks and crevices, and falling back broken up into foam,
and ever forced onward at a tremendous rate by the mass of water behind.
The place itself would in bright sunshine have made the stoutest-hearted
pause and draw breath before adventuring its passage; but seen in the
weird subdued light which came down filtered through the trees which
overhung the chasm a thousand feet above, it seemed terrible. For only
at intervals could a glimpse of the sky be seen, while as they
penetrated farther, the walls, which almost exactly matched in curve,
angle and depression, came nearer together, and the place darkened.
"Take care--take care!" Dale cried from time to time, as he found
portions of the ledge narrower and more difficult; but Saxe did not
speak, only crept on, with his left hand grasping every inequality of
the rock, and, like his leader, glancing down into the mad race of
foaming water, in the hope of catching sight of Melchior's upturned face
and outstretched hands.
It never occurred to him that they could render no help, even if they
did catch sight of their unfortunate companion; for they were never less
than twenty feet above the narrow hissing and roaring stream, and there
was not a spot where a rock could be grasped: everything was worn too
smooth by the constant passage of the water, which doubtless carried
with it stones from the lake as well as those ever loosened by frost and
crumbling down from above, to aid in grinding the walls quite smooth.
But there was the possibility of the unfortunate man being thrown into
one of the vast pot-holes or cauldrons formed cavern-like in bends of
the chasm, where as it rushed along past the zigzag of the broken rock
the water glanced from one side, and shot almost at right angles across
to the other, to whirl round and round, ever enlarging a great well-like
hole, the centre of which looked like a funnel-like whirlpool, with the
water screwing its way apparently into the bowels of the earth, and down
whose watery throat great balls of foam were constantly being sucked.
From time to time, as Dale rested for a few moments to peer into one of
these, he raised his eyes to look back hopelessly at Saxe, who could
only shake his head in his utter despair, knowing only too well that it
was hopeless.
Then on and on again, with the horror of the terrible place seeming to
crush them down, while to Saxe it was as if the waters were trying to
leap at him to wash him from the narrow ledge and bear him away. And
the farther they went on the more fearful the place seemed to grow. The
walls dripped with moisture, as a result of the spray which rose from
the hurrying race, and shut them in back and front with a gloomy mist,
which struck cold and dank as it moistened their faces and seemed
choking to breathe.
Again Dale paused, to peer down at one of the great whirling pools
beneath the rock, which was being undermined in this place more than
ever; and as Saxe clung by him and gazed down too, there was the
perfectly round pool of water, with its central pipe, which, by the
optical illusion caused by the gloom and mist, looked reversed--that is,
as if the concavity were convex, and he were gazing at the eye of some
subterranean monster, the effect being made more realistic by the rock
overhanging it like a huge brow.
"Come on," cried Dale. But Saxe was fascinated, and did not hear his
voice in the hollow, echoing, pipe-like roar.
"Come on, boy--quick!" he shouted again. But Saxe still bent down over
the racing waters, to stare at that awful similitude of an eye, which
moved strangely and bemused and fascinated him so that he looked as if
he would be drawn down into it and be a victim to the awful place.
"Saxe! Saxe!" shouted Dale, seizing him by the arm; and the boy started
and gazed at him wildly. "Can you see him!"
"No, no," cried the boy.
"What were you looking at!"
"That! that!" gasped Saxe.
"Ah! yes. Like some terrible eye. Come along. I can't think that
anything would stay here. It would be swept along at a tremendous rate.
That water is going almost at the rate of a great fall. They must have
been borne right through long ago."
"Think so?" Saxe tried to say. Certainly his lips moved; and roused
now from the strange fascination, he crept on after his leader, their
progress being very slow in spite of their anxiety, for all was new and
strange, and the next step, for aught they knew, might plunge them down
to a fall like their guide's.
Then the way was dangerously narrow at times, one dripping place forcing
them to stoop--so heavily overhung the rock above.
At last, just in front of them, the gorge seemed to end, for the place
was blocked by a wall that ran across the narrow rift at right angles,
and against this the whole body of water was propelled, to strike
straight upon it, and rise up like a billow of the sea and fall back
with a furious roar. Here the foam formed so dense a mist that Dale had
crept right into it before he realised that, as the water fell back, it
shot away through the gloom to his left, forming a fresh billow against
a perpendicular wall before it again darted onward.
"Has this awful place no end!" he said, as he grasped the meaning of
this fresh disturbance of its course; and he peered forward again for
the path, it being absolute madness to think of seeing anything in the
watery chaos below. Then, looking back, it was as if some icy hand had
clutched his heart, for he was alone.
For the moment he felt that Saxe must have slipped and fallen, and in
the agony he suffered he fancied himself back again in England facing
the boy's father and trying to plead some excuse for the want of care.
Saxe was entrusted to him for a few months' visit to the Alps--a visit
to combine pleasure and instruction, as well as to gain more robust
health.
As he thought this he was already on his way back to the sharp angle he
had passed round, and as he reached it his horror and despair became
almost unbearable.
But this part of his suffering had its termination; and he fully grasped
that, like as in a dream, all this had occupied but a few moments of
time, for a hand was thrust round the stony angle and searched for a
projection, and as Dale eagerly grasped the humid palm, Saxe glided
round and then followed him into the corner, beneath which the water
roared and churned itself into foam, passed this in safety, and once
more they crept on, thinking now only of getting out into the daylight
and following the stream in the hope of finding poor Melchior's remains.
The same thoughts occurred to both of them: suppose the poor fellow was
beyond their reach, swept right away into the depths of some lake miles
away--what were they to do? Retrace their steps to the mouth of the
gorge, where their provision was left, or try to find their way somehow
over the mountains? It would be a fearful task, ignorant of their way,
faint from want of food, weak from exhaustion. It was now for the first
time that Saxe realised how terrible the mountains were, and how easily
a person might be lost, or meet with a mishap that would mean laming,
perhaps death.
Then their thoughts of self gave place again to those relating to their
poor guide.
"We must find him!" Saxe cried involuntarily, and so loudly that Dale
turned and looked back at him wildly, for the thoughts had been exactly
his own.
"Yes," he said, his voice muffled by the roar of the waters; "we must
find him. The place is not so very large, after all. Wait till we get
out: I can't talk here."
For the roar had seemed to increase and the darkness to grow deeper for
the next few yards. The water, too, was nearer, the path having a steep
incline downward, with the natural result that the ledge was dripping
with moisture, and from time to time some wave would strike the opposite
wall with a heavy slap, and the spray fly in quite a gust, as of rain,
full in their faces.
"It can't be much farther," thought Saxe, as he went cautiously down the
incline, to see that the rock on his right now bent right over, and had
caused the darkness. Then the path bent to the left, struck off to the
right again, and was now down within three or four feet of the water,
after which there was a fresh corner to be turned, where the wave that
rose up seemed somehow illuminated; but they were quite close up, with
the water almost running over the path, before they fully grasped that
the light came from the side, bringing with it some hope, even if it
were little; and at the same time Saxe felt the possibility of going
back the same way now that the full extent of the danger could be
grasped.
"Poor Melchior!" he muttered--"it must have been impossible for him to
have led the mule through here;" and as he thought, this, the full light
of day came streaming in, making Dale, a few yards before him, stand out
like a silhouette clearly cut in black, while for a hundred yards the
water now ran, rapidly widening and growing less like a torrent, till
right away he could see it flowing smoothly between the towering rocks
that were piled-up on either side of its bed.