Soon Renshaw began to notice an incoherency in his companion’s replies. Fatigue versus excitement had carried the day. Sellon, who was of a full-blooded habit, and uninured to such calls as had of late been made upon his energies, had succumbed. He was fast asleep.
Left alone in the midst of a dead world, while the whole wilderness slumbered around, Renshaw strove to attune his faculties to the prevailing calm—to try and gain a few hours of much-needed jest. But his nerves were strung to their utmost tension. The speculation of years, the object of his thoughts sleeping and waking, were about to be attained. Sleep utterly refused to visit him.
He could not even rest. At last he rose. Taking up his trusty double gun—rifle and shot-barrel—he wandered forth from the fireless camp.
By the light of the burning stars he picked his way cautiously along the base of the rocky ridge, keeping a careful eye in front of him, above, around, everywhere. Yes, the object of years of anxious thought, of more than one lonely and perilous expedition into the heart of these arid and forbidding wilds, was within reach at last. It must be. Did not that gruesome find down there in the gully point unmistakably to that?
The cool night wind fanned his brow. All the influences of the dead, solemn wilderness were upon him, and his thoughts reverted to another object, but to one upon which he had schooled himself to think no more.
In vain. There on that lonely mountain-top at midnight, in his utter solitude, the man’s heart melted within him at the thought of his hopeless love—at the recollection of that anguished face, that broken voice pleading for his forgiveness; for his sympathy in her own dire extremity. What was she doing at that moment, he idly speculated? Ah! her regrets, her longings, her prayers were not for him, were all for the other; for the man who shared his present undertaking, who slumbered so peacefully but a few hundred yards away.
Why had he brought this man to Sunningdale, to steal away that which should have been his? Why had he brought him here now, to enrich him in order that nothing might be wanting to complete his own utter self-sacrifice? He owed him nothing, for had he not twice paid the debt in full? Why had he stepped between him and certain death? But for his ready promptitude Maurice Sellon would now be almost as sad a relic of humanity as that upon which they had gazed but a few hours back. But the solemn eyes of the stars looking down upon him, the very grandeur of the mountain solitude, seemed to chide him for such thoughts. What was the puny fate of a few human beings compared with the immensity of ages upon which those stars had looked down—the roll of centuries during which those silent mountains had stood there ever the same?
A perceptible lightening suffused the velvety vault above. The horned moon rose higher over the drear sea of peaks. The crags stood forth silvery in the new-born light—and then, as his glance wandered downwards, Renshaw felt every drop of blood flow back to his heart.
Far below shone a tiny glimmer—the glimmer of a mere spark. But withal so powerful that it pierced the darkness of the far depths as the flash of a ray of fire.
He stood as one turned to stone, holding his very breath. He rubbed his eyes, and looked again. There it was still. Again he averted his gaze, and again he looked. The distant spark was glittering more brilliantly than ever. It seemed to gain in size and power as he looked. It held him spellbound with its green incandescence flashing forth from the darkness down there in the far depths.