Their eyes followed the long, irregular curve, more like the figure five than like a horse-shoe, and so deeply indented in the center that they could scarcely mark the center of the abyss, whose almost apple-green tint was every moment hidden by the perpetually ascending clouds of milky spray, sometimes touched by the tinted bow, and always descending into the cloudy veil that eternally conceals the seething abyss below.
“This is Terrapin Rock,” said Kate, after they had looked in silence for a time; “and there used to be a tower here from which you could look down on all this wild raging commotion, feeling the strong stone structure tremble beneath you. It came down at last—or was pulled down, because it was thought dangerous, I forget which.”
“Well, this is fearful enough for me,” said Flora, turning away, at last, with Kate, while May still stood lost in the fascination of the scene, till roused by Kate’s call, when she discovered that Hugh Macnab had lingered also, absorbed in the same fascination, and was now waiting to help her back across the little bridge which joined the rocky point to the island.
“It seems like waking up to one’s own identity again, after having lost it in a vague sense of ‘the Immensities,’” remarked Hugh, as they joined the others; and May felt that the words exactly expressed her own feeling.
“But we must wake up in earnest,” said Kate, “and hurry on, or Aunt Bella will be certainly imagining that we have all gone over the Falls.”
They hurried along the smooth, broad road till they at last came up with Aunt Bella, seated on a rustic bench, with a large basket beside her.
“Oh, my dears! what have—” she began, but Kate playfully laid her finger on her lips, saying: “We are all here, Auntie, quite safe, and now we are going to look at the Fall from Luna Island.”
“My dear, not I! I never could go there since that dreadful thing happened there, years ago. It makes me faint, just to think of it! If you go, do be careful! Don’t go and stand near the brink!”
“No; we’ll be careful, I assure you. Now don’t worry about us! We’ll be back soon, and then we’ll have our luncheon.” And she led the way down the stair that leads from Goat Island to the charming bit of bosky green which cuts off the small “Central Fall” from the great “American Fall.” May and Flora both exclaimed with delight over its wonderful combination of beauty and terror, its glancing, silvery sheen and terrible velocity, as it rushed past them at headlong speed, on to the misty depths below. And while they stood fascinated by the sight, Kate told them the tale of the tragedy which had happened there on one bright summer day like this, when a young man thoughtlessly caught up a little child and sportingly held her over the brink,—when the struggling little one somehow escaped from his grasp, and the horror-stricken young man madly leaped after her, both being instantly lost to sight in the wild rush of the torrent.
Hugh Macnab turned away with a blanched face. “What a penalty for a momentary thoughtlessness!” he said, in a scarcely audible tone.