All as in a lightning flash some flicker of hope returned. For he saw
they were underneath the place which Nesta pointed out to him as having
afforded refuge to at any rate one in their position. It was their only
chance. Hope well nigh died again. To climb there alone would be
something of an undertaking--but with a helpless girl--
Yet he reached that point of refuge, but how he did so Campian never
knew--never will know to his dying day. The superhuman effort; the
hellish deafening din of the black flood as it shot past, so near as to
splash them, clinging there to the steep rock face, not more than half
way up to the place of refuge; of the words of encouragement which he
whispered to his half-fainting charge athwart the thunder-roar of the
waters, as he literally dragged her up beside him; of the tearing
muscles and cracking joints, and blazing, scintillating brain--of all
these he has a dim and confused recollection, and can only attribute the
accomplishment of the feat to a well nigh superhuman mania of
desperation.
Higher still! No time for a pause or rest--no permanent foothold is
here--and the waters are still rising. He dared not so much as look
down. The daze of the lightning striking upon the rock face aided his
efforts. The crash of the thunder peal was as entirely drowned in the
bellowing and strident seething of this huge syphoned flood, as though
it were silent.
The refuge at last, but what a refuge! Only by the most careful
distribution of weight could two persons support themselves on it for
any length of time. It was hardly even a ledge, hardly more than a mere
unevenness in the rock's surface. Yet, one of these two persons was a
terribly frightened and far from robust girl; the other seemed to have
expended air the strength within him in the effort of getting there at
all. Thus they clung, mere pigmy atoms against this stupendous cliff
wall; suspended over the seething hell of waters that would have churned
the life out of them within a moment or so of reaching its surface.
"There! We are safe now!" he gasped, still panting violently after the
exertion. "We have only to wait until the water runs off. It will soon
do that, you know."
"No, it will not," she replied, her blue eyes wide with terror, and
shudderingly turning her face to the cliff to avoid the awfulness of the
sight. "It may take days. The _tangi_ by the camp took a whole night
once. It was the night you came."
"Well, even then? Upward will have had time to get through safely,
ample time, and at the first opportunity they will come for us."
"They won't find us," she moaned. "You know that place I showed you
where Bhallu Khan told us the water had risen high enough to sweep a man
off. It was higher than this."
"I think not I think this is the higher of the two," he answered
mendaciously. In her fear she had not recognised the place, and he
would not undeceive her. For his part, he blessed the chance that had
put the idea into his head. But for her having narrated the incident as
they rode past, it might never have occurred to him that the attempt was
feasible, and--what then?
"We mustn't discount the worst," he went on.
"The chances of it rising any higher are _nil_, and even if it does,
there is plenty of margin before it reaches us. It isn't as if it were
a case of an incessant and regular downpour. It is only one of those
sharp afternoon thunder showers that run off these great slab-like rocks
as off a roof on a huge scale. My dear little girl, you must be brave,
and thank Heaven we were able to fetch this place at all. Look, I
believe it has run off a little lower already."
"Oh, no--no! I can't look. It is horrible--horrible!" she answered, as
venturing one peep forth, she again hid her face, shuddering.
And in truth her terror was little to be wondered at. It was growing
dusk now in the world without, and the roar and hiss of the vast flood
coursing with frightful velocity between those grim, cavernous cliffs in
the shades, would have tried the nerves of anybody contemplating the
scene from the impartial vantage ground of a place of safety. How then
did it seem to these two, crouching on a steep slant of rock, whose
unevenness alone sustained them in position; cowering over this awful
flood, which might at any moment, rising higher, sweep them into a
horrible death? And then, that the situation should lose nothing of its
terror, Campian noticed, with a sinking of the heart, that the water
actually was rising.
Yes. A mark upon the iron-bound face of the opposite cliff, which had
caught his attention on first being able to look round, was now covered.
Was it the gathering gloom, or had the scratch been washed away? No.
The latter was stratified. The water had risen nearly two feet.
The depth at first he judged to be about ten feet. Two more had been
added. He fixed another mark. The roaring was already so fearful it
could hardly be increased. The hissing, boiling eddies of the rush,
leaped over the new mark, then subsided--leaped again, and this time did
not subside. They streamed over, hiding it completely. And still the
rain poured down pitilessly, and he thought he could detect a peal of
thunder above the roar of the waters, which suggested a renewed burst
over the very catchment area which had supplied this flood. Well, he
had done what he could. The end was not in his hands.
"Oh-h--how cold it is!" moaned Nesta.
"Of course; I was forgetting," he replied, with great difficulty
divesting himself of his coat, for hardly so much as a finger could be
spared in the effort involved to hold himself--to hold both of them--in
position. But it was done at last, and the garment, all too light, he
wrapped around the girl's shivering form. She uttered a feeble protest,
which took not much overruling.
"What a precious pair of drowned rats we must look, Nessita," he said;
"and what a sight we shall be when they find us in the morning."
"But they never will find us in the morning--not me, at any rate."
"Won't they? They will though, and you will be the first to think of
the appearances. Why, that pretty curled fringe that I and those two
sodger Johnnies were eager to die for a little while ago is all over the
shop. You should just see it now."
Thus he bantered, as though they were in the snug dining tent at
Upward's camp instead of amid a raving hell of terror and of imminent
death. But the while the man's heart died within him, for in the last
faint touch of light he noticed that yet another mark, higher than the
rest, had disappeared.
"I wonder which of those two Johnnies aforesaid would give most to be
able to change places with me now," he went on, still bantering. "Or,
at any rate, won't they just say so to-morrow? Here, you must get up
close to me," he said, drawing her right to him. "It will serve the
double purpose of keeping you from going overboard and keeping you
warmer, and me too, perhaps."
If ever there was time and place for conventionality, assuredly it was
not here. Her violent shivering quieted down as she nestled against
him. The warmth of the contact and the additional sense of protection
combined to work wonders.
"Now, talk to me," he said; "or try and go to sleep, if you would
rather. I'll take care you don't fall over."
"Sleep? I don't suppose I shall ever sleep again."
"Rather, you will. And, Nessie, shall I tell you something you'd rather
like to hear? The water is already beginning to go down."
"What else has it been doing ever since we came up here?"
"That's right!" he cried, delighted at this little spark of the old fun
loving nature reasserting itself. "But, bar jokes, it really is
lowering. I have kept an eye upon certain marks that were covered just
now. They are visible again."
The rain had ceased. The bellowing of the flood was as loud as ever,
and but that they were talking into each other's ears, their voices
would have been well nigh inaudible. What he had said was true, and
with a great gladness of heart, he recognised the fact.
"No, no! You are only saying that to make me think it is all right,"
she answered, the wild eagerness in her tone betraying something of the
strain she had undergone. "It can't be really--is it? Say--is it
really?"
"It is really, so far as I can judge. But it has turned so confoundedly
dark, one can hardly see anything. Keep up your spirits, child. You
have had an adventure, that's all."
"Well, you are a good one to share it with," she murmured. "Tell me,
were you ever afraid of anything in your life?"
"I should rather think I was, of heaps of things. I should have been
hideously so before we started to climb up here, only there wasn't time.
Oh don't make any mistake about me. I know what funk is, and that of
the bluest kind."
Thus he talked on, lightly, cheerily, and the girl, if she could not
quite forget her numbness and terror and exhaustion, was conscious of no
small alleviation of the same. It was pitch dark now, but the thunder
of the waters, and the cavernous rattle of the stones and pebbles swept
along by their rush, seemed to have abated in volume. An hour went by,
then two. Nesta, half asleep, was answering drowsily. The gloom of the
great chasm lightened. A full moon had risen over the outside world,
and its rays were penetrating even to these forbidding depths. The
roaring of the flood had become a mere purling ripple. The water had
almost run off.
Campian was becoming frightfully exhausted. Not much longer could he
support this strain. Would Upward never arrive? He had succeeded,
providentially, in climbing up here, under stress of desperation, but to
descend safely now, cramped and exhausted as they both were, would be
impossible. A broken neck, or a broken limb or two, would be the sure
and certain result of any such attempt.
As the moon-rays brightened, he could make out the bottom of the
_tangi_, and it looked hideously far down, almost as if the rush of
water had worn it deeper. It was all seamed and furrowed up, and the
water was now babbling down in several little streams. Would help never
arrive!
Ha! At last! Voices--native voices--then, although talking in an
Oriental tongue, other voices, recognisable as European ones. The sound
was coming down the _tangi_.
"Wake up, Nessita. Here they are, at last."
But the girl had already heard, and started up with a suddenness which
would have hurled her to the base of the cliff but for his restraining
grasp.
"Wait, wait!" he urged. "Be doubly careful now. We don't want to break
our necks after a narrow shave of drowning." Then lifting up his voice,
he gave forth a mighty shout.
It was answered--answered by several voices. In the moonlight they
could make out figures hurrying down the _tangi_.
"Where are you?" sung out Upward, who led the way. Then he stopped
short, with an ejaculation of amazement, as the answer revealed the
objects of his search high overhead. "Good heavens! how did you get up
there?"
"Never mind now. What _we_ want to know is how to get down."
But with Bhallu Khan and one of his forest guard were two or three
sturdy Baluchis, who had joined the party--all wiry mountaineers--and by
dint of making a kind of human pyramid against the rock wall, the pair
were landed safely beneath.
Then many were the questions and answers and ejaculations, as the full
peril of the situation became apparent. Those who had undergone it had
not much to say. Nesta seemed half dazed with exhaustion and recent
terror, while Campian declared himself too infernally tired to talk.
Fleming however produced a flask, which went far to counteract the cold
and wet. The whole party was there. They had got safely through the
_tangi_, when the rain began to come down in torrents, and in an
incredibly short space of time the slab-like slopes of the hills had
poured down a vast volume into the dry nullah, which drained the valley
area. They themselves were through only just in time, but had felt no
great anxiety on account of the other two, reckoning them so far behind
that the impassability of the _tangi_ would be obvious to them directly
they reached it. Of course they would not attempt it. But to find them
here, half way through--saved as by a miracle, and then with the loss of
two horses--no, they had not reckoned upon that.
All this Upward explained. Then, looking up at their place of refuge:
"I don't suppose there's another place in the whole length of the
_tangi_ you could have taken refuge in, and how the mischief you ever
got to this one is a mystery to me."
"Well, for the matter of that, so it is to me, Upward," rejoined
Campian. "I'm perfectly certain I couldn't do it again for a thousand
pounds."
"Why, that's the place a man was swept off from the year before last.
Isn't it, Bhallu Khan?"
"_Ha, Huzoor_!" asserted the forester, taking in the burden of their
talk.
"Well, you've had a narrow escape, old chap--both of you have. I don't
know how you did it, but here you are. We were coming back to look for
you, thinking you had got turned round, and might get trying some other
way back, and this isn't an over-safe country for a couple of strangers
to get lost in at night. By the way, I can't make out why you got so
far behind. More than once we kept signalling you to come on. It
occurred to us you might miss the way. Didn't you see us?"
"No."
"None so blind as those who won't see--ah--ha--ha--ha!" sneered
Bracebrydge, tailing off his vacuous laugh in would-be significance.
But of this remark Campian took absolutely no notice. It was not the
first time Bracebrydge had rendered himself offensive and quarrelsome in
the presence of ladies, and the inherent caddishness of this gallant
worthy was best recognised by the silence of contempt.
It was late before the party reached camp--later still when they got to
bed. All was well that ended well--so far, that is, for Nesta
Cheriton's nervous system had received a shock, which rendered her more
or less out of sorts for some time, during which time, however,
Bracebrydge and Fleming were recalled to Shalalai.