“At any rate we are safe enough here, though it is infamously wet,” said her escort, reassuringly; “and—by George, we are in luck’s way—there’s a house!”
A roof became apparent at the bottom of the ravine, and in a few minutes they had reached it. But disappointment was in store, for the welcome haven of refuge turned out to be an old disused shanty, formerly run up for the accommodation of some road party, or possibly had served as an out-station for those in charge of grazing stock. Nevertheless, though a tumble-down and sorry-looking tenement, yet it would afford a tolerably substantial shelter from the drenching fury of the storm. Claverton lifted his companion from her saddle, and pushing open the mouldering door, which creaked with an unearthly noise on its rusty hinges, they stood inside.
“Not exactly the marble halls of the poet’s dream—deuced cold they must have been at times—but it’s wet outside and dry in here, which makes all the difference,” he remarked, as he struck a match and surveyed the interior of the sorry apartment. The dilapidated thatch hung in cobwebbed festoons, throwing out ghostly, waving shadows in the flickering light; and a cockroach or two, alarmed by this sudden intrusion, scurried along the worm-eaten beams. “Wait half a second,” he went on, “while I just go and hitch up the horses, and then we’ll proceed to make ourselves as comfortable as circumstances will allow.”
“Oh, Arthur, don’t leave me alone, even for a moment! I am so frightened!” she exclaimed, clinging to his arm. The name slipped out in her terror, but she was quite unhinged, and noticed it not.
“Frightened? You foolish child,” he answered, reassuringly; “there’s nothing to be afraid of now—Look. We can afford to laugh at the storm here, and will be as snug as anything directly.”
“But it’s so dark, and—”
“Dark. Well, yes; unfortunately the last tenant forgot to leave any candles for our benefit, which was uncivil of him, to say the least of it. However, ‘the Heaven above’ is kindly doing its best to supply the deficiency, and we’ll meet it half-way by starting a famous blaze.”
So saying, he gathered together some old bits of board which lay about, and, chipping them into small fragments, built up a fire well in the middle of the room—for the fireplace was choked up with dust and fallen bricks—and, lighting it, the flames darted up, crackling and sputtering, and diffusing a genial and revivifying warmth.
“There. The smoke will go out through the thatch, and at any rate it won’t be worse than in a Kafir hut. You’re not very wet, are you? No, I thought my old poncho hadn’t lost its cunning. And now you won’t be afraid to stay by yourself a minute while I look after the horses. It’s dark as pitch outside, and the brutes will be wandering Heaven knows where if I don’t make them fast at once.”
He went out, and leading the horses round to the back of the house proceeded to secure them in a sheltered place. While thus engaged a low scream, emanating from the room he had just quitted, fell on his ear.