THE WHITE WATERFALL
We found the rope exceedingly useful now that we had decided to explore
the place in search of a way out. It was reasonable to think that the
floor of the cavern would contain innumerable fissures into which we
might fall, and to guard against this we decided to make a life line out
of the thirty yards of manilla we had luckily obtained. Allowing about
five yards of rope between each two persons, I tied it in turn around
the waist of Holman, Barbara, the Professor, Edith, and myself, and
being thus prepared against a precipice in our path, Holman took the
lead and we followed in single file as the tightening of the rope
informed each one that the immediate leader was a safe distance in
front.
"Is there any choice of direction?" asked Holman, pausing after he had
taken half a dozen steps.
"I don't think so," I said. "Unless some one has an intuition regarding
the path to liberty."
"Please let me pick the route," murmured Edith. "I am stretching out my
arm, Mr. Holman; will you come here to me and feel the direction I am
pointing in?"
We clustered round the girl, each one feeling her outstretched arm and
then turning quickly toward the point indicated. I was glad that no one
could see my own face at that moment. It was pathetic to think of any
one choosing a route in that abyss of horror, and the trouble which the
girl took to make sure that Holman would move off in the direction she
pointed brought tears to my eyes.
"I--I might be silly in thinking it," she stammered, "but I believe--oh,
please, Mr. Holman, try and walk in the direction I pointed in!"
"I certainly will try," said the youngster. "If I go wrong, you put me
right, will you? I believe somehow that we're going to find a way out. I
don't know the right path to it, but I've got a premonition we'll find
it. Now we're off again."
We moved forward with anxious footsteps. Imagination furrowed the floor
of that place with bottomless crevices, and the cold hand of fear
gripped our hearts. It required a mental effort to move one foot past
the other, and whenever one of the girls stumbled, her little cry of
alarm brought untold agony to Holman and myself as we took a grip of
the rope and braced ourselves against the happening which our excited
minds expected any moment. We were walking hand in hand with dread--a
dread that became greater when we thought that a false step of ours
might drag to death the two women that we loved.
On, and on, and on, we bored into the horrible night. With blind
footsteps we walked fearfully through the Stygian waves that rolled
around us. The place seemed to be of enormous size, and in the dead
silence that surrounded us our footsteps woke clattering echoes that
appeared to mock our efforts to escape.
The air in places had a strange odour that reminded us of camphor. This
peculiar smell seemed to be in certain stratas of the atmosphere through
which we passed, and whenever our passage through these scented layers
was unduly prolonged, we experienced a sensation that I can only liken
to the near approach of seasickness. It made the girls sick and faint,
but they walked on without complaining.
We struck the wall of the place after we had been walking for a period
that we judged to be about three hours, and we decided to rest for a
while. We sat close together upon the cold floor and endeavoured to
cheer each other's spirits by constantly asserting that the air of the
place made it reasonable to suppose that there must be some other
entrance besides the hole through which Leith had lowered the three, and
the fissure through which Holman and I had rolled down the gigantic ash
pile. And the assertions seemed logical. The two entrances that we knew
of opened into Leith's retreat, and it was hard to think that the air
supply of the enormous cavern in which we were wandering could come
through those two openings. We combatted our fears with this argument as
we ate a morsel of the food we had received that morning, and feeling
that he who has the biggest stock of hope has the biggest grip upon
life, we endeavoured to make light of our misfortunes as we stumbled on
again after a short rest.
But that impenetrable night produced a depression that we could not
shake off. Imagination sprang ahead of the moment and pictured our final
struggles. We fought with the nightmares that entered our minds, and
conversation languished. We couldn't speak while the mental canvases
were being rapidly coloured with scenes depicting our end in the
darkness and the silence, where a grim fate would even deny one a last
look at a dearly loved face. A silence came upon us that had the same
effect as intense cold. Each in his own frozen husk of despair plodded
forward with the idea that the others were so engrossed in their own
thoughts that they were not inclined to answer when addressed. The
darkness so completely isolated each person that after some hours of
silence it required a tremendous effort to thoroughly convince the mind
that one was walking with living people and not with phantoms.
It was after one of these intervals of silence that Barbara Herndon made
a discovery that chilled our blood. She made some commonplace remark to
her sister and received no reply. She repeated the observation, but it
brought no comment. The happening seemed to drag the rest of us from the
strange torpor, and we stopped. We sensed that Barbara Herndon was
feeling her way toward her sister, and presently the younger girl gave a
shriek of alarm that stirred a million echoes in that place of terror.
"Edith!" she shrieked. "Edith! Edith! Where are you?"
Holman and I clawed fiercely upon the rope, moving toward each other in
an effort to find a quick solution for the mystery. We collided
violently as we reached the spot where the rope had circled Edith
Herndon's waist, and we stood, stunned and speechless, as we fingered
the cord. In some manner, probably severed by a knifelike projection of
rock, the loop which I had knotted around her body had been cut through,
and the rope had fallen unnoticed from the waist of the weary girl!
"Great God!" I cried. "Where did we lose her? What way did we come?"
The questions were ridiculous. The numbing influence of the place had
made us walk for an hour or so in complete silence, and it was
impossible to say when she had lost her position in the line. And now,
as we moved round and round, endeavouring to peer into the blackness, we
lost all sense of direction. Each had a different notion about the way
we had come. While we were moving forward, our combined efforts to walk
straight ahead made it impossible for one to turn and go in an opposite
direction, but in the few moments of our excitement as we turned and
twisted in clawing for the loop where Edith had been tied, we became
bewildered. We didn't know in which direction to turn in searching for
the lost one!
"What'll we do?" cried the Professor. "Do something! Quick! Find her!
Find her!"
I took a great breath and yelled her name into the darkness. The sound
thundered through the place like the noise made by a freight train.
Again and again I screamed it, and the million devils in the place
shrieked the name in mockery. I exhausted myself in my mad efforts to
send my voice to her ears.
Holman gripped my arm when I had worked myself into an insane frenzy,
and he begged me to be quiet.
"Barbara thought she heard an answer," he cried. "Listen! There it is
again!"
It was Edith! Her voice came to us like a thread of silver, and with no
thought of the bottomless crevices that might be in our path, we charged
blindly toward the spot from which her cry had come.
It seemed ages before we met her. The sounds puzzled us, but at last we
gripped her hands, and the Professor and Barbara, hysterical with joy,
sobbed their thanks into the gloom.
"I don't know how the rope became undone," cried Edith. "I didn't find
out that I had become separated from the rest of you till I attempted to
draw your attention to the waterfall."
"To the what?" I questioned.
"To the waterfall," repeated the girl. "Did you pass it? It is a
beautiful little waterfall, and the water flows over a white limestone
rock that makes it sparkle like so many fireflies in the dark."
I cannot explain what happened to me at that moment. Some veil within my
mind was torn away by the few words that the girl had uttered. I was
back upon Levuka wharf, lying under the copra bag where Holman had found
me, and for a moment I could not speak as the subconscious mind flung a
score of half-forgotten incidents into my conscious area.
_"It is the White Waterfall!"_ I yelled. "It is the White Waterfall
that the Maori sang of on the wharf at Levuka! He was warning Toni, and
Toni was killed by Soma because he knew! It is the way out! We're saved!
We're saved! It is on the road to heaven out of Black Fernando's hell!"
[Illustration]