We were coming up to the light now, and it grew clearer and clearer. There was evidently a big drop somewhere very near. And unless my ears were much mistaken, there was also a big waterfall.
“Hear that, Marky,” I said, “that roaring sound? You’ll probably see a young Niagara somewhere when we get to the top.”
Well, it was not a Niagara or a Victoria Falls, but it could have held its own very well with any other fall in the world you might like to mention. When we came out on the summit we saw that the whole countryside was broken away under our feet and that the nearest thing to us, as we stood up there on the verge of a mighty basalt wall, was the feathery top of a forest so far beneath as to be half blue with distance. And we saw that the whole of this immense rampart, greater than any straight-down drop I had ever seen in my life, was taken at one leap by a river that came down from a ridge above the one we had been climbing.
The Marquis stood quite still on the summit, looking at the indescribably magnificent view spread out below, for some minutes.
“To think,” he said, at last, “that it is ours alone—that no other eye shall——”
“Get your revolver out,” I said. There was no use making a fuss—I hate fusses—but there was also no use trying to deny that our unlucky fate had caught up with us again, and that the puzzle of the morning was fully explained at last. There, on the verge of the precipice, standing nonchalantly with their toes half over, as only a mountain native can, were a dozen or more Koiroros who had slipped out of the bush like snakes as the Marquis was speaking. From what I could see, they must have taken a short cut, got to the precipice before us and been comfortably waiting for our arrival.
This time there could be no doubt whatever about their intention. They had surrounded us before you could say “knife”—not very close, but near enough to be dangerous—and were creeping closer and closer, poising their stone-headed clubs in an ominous manner. From the dense wall of greenery behind, a spear came whistling out, excellently aimed for the Marquis; it missed him by no more than an inch. Another went into my hat and knocked it off.
We drew our revolvers and fired. The Marquis got his man clean through the temple and dropped him as neatly as one could wish. Mine was hit in the ribs; he fell over the precipice, and his cry, as he went down, grew thin like the whistle of a train running away in the distance, until we ceased to hear it. We had not much leisure for listening, in any case. The Koiroros had bolted at the first shot, as natives usually do; but they were busy throwing spears from cover now, and the Marquis and I had to use more ammunition than we liked, firing at random into the green, before we succeeded in stopping them.
They did seem to be driven off at last, however, and we began walking along the edge of the precipice, to try and find a way down, for that was now a vital necessity.
There was none.