Thus passed the fearful time till brief twilight deepened into night. Still Enrico clung to his crag, its shape enabling him so to support his person that its weight did not rest on his hands, though all their strength was needed to enable him to resist the constant pressure of the furious waters. He was contending with a foe that could never grow weary. Often Enrico cried aloud for help, with a bitter consciousness of the improbability that such cry would reach a human ear, since he had never yet known any one come to the top of the cliff, less from the difficulty of reaching it, than from a superstition which clothed the Cascata della Morte with supernatural terrors. The forest path, indeed, was not far distant, but it was lonely and wild, and never trodden save by members of the band. It seemed to Enrico as if the din which perpetually roared in his ears completely drowned the sound of his voice. He could hardly hear it himself; how could it reach a distant ear?
The robber had become calmer, though not less wretched. His mind now reverted to the past. Each event of his life—every error—every sin—seemed to rise up before him distinct as the white spray in the moonlight, hissed in his ears with the roar of the fall. Had not his position for years been imaged by his position now? Carried away by his passions as by the flood, hurled over the brink of crime in full rapid career towards endless ruin, yet caught—suspended—restrained—as it were, by the prayers, entreaties, example, of one who remained amid the whirl, the rack, and the rush, yet unshaken and firm as the crag.
In that hour of extremest peril, the sinner's cry arose to his God. Raphael had spoken of mercy; might not that mercy be extended even unto him, not perhaps to save him from impending death, but from the more fearful death of the soul? Words that his brother had read from the Scriptures flashed back on the mind of Enrico:
"'He is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him.'"
The drowning soul clung to that truth, even as the numbed hands clung to the rock. Enrico knew the utter impossibility now of saving himself; he felt that he deserved no mercy from an offended God; but there was One who could save "to the uttermost," One who had died to save, One who could draw him yet out of the horrible pit, and set his feet on a rock, and order his goings.
While thus hanging, as it were, between earth and heaven, Enrico heard the call of Horace. He doubted not for a moment that the Almighty had sent his brother to his aid. When the rope of knotted strips was thrown down the cascade, it seemed to the poor penitent as an emblem of heavenly hope. Then sudden darkness hid it from his view, and in vain his hand groped in the chill waters to find it. The gloom of despair seemed to settle on his soul. The cloud rolled away, and the straining eyes of Enrico beheld the rope once again. He sought to grasp it, and failed.
Was it that mercy, even the mercy held out to all contrite sinners, was not to be reached by him—that he who for so long had tried the patience of a long-suffering God, was to perish at last even in sight of the means of salvation?
"Raphael is praying, and I will hope," thought the struggling sufferer; and when Horace shouted down the direction to spring. "Raphael bids me, I obey," was the reflection which nerved him for the one desperate leap upon which he staked his existence.
Even when the rope was grasped, so great was the sufferer's exhaustion, so benumbed and stiffened were his fingers by the drenching of the flood, that he could scarcely retain his hold. Yet it was as though an angel whispered as he was dragged upwards through the dash and the foam, "Hold fast—hold fast the hope set before you!" It was not merely the action of a drowning man grasping a cord, but of a perishing soul clinging to its last hope of grace.
As soon as the fearful effort was crowned with success, exhausted nature gave way. In a stupor which must have had fatal consequences had it overwhelmed him two minutes earlier, Enrico lay with his dripping head supported on the knee of Horace Cleveland. The stupor continued for some time. At length the pale lips parted and sounds came forth. Horace bent down to listen, and caught the words,—