Chapter Eight.
The Dark Jaws of Death.
All as in a lightning flash some flicker of hope returned. For he saw they were underneath the place which Nesta pointed out to him as having afforded refuge to at any rate one in their position. It was their only chance. Hope well nigh died again. To climb there alone would be something of an undertaking—but with a helpless girl—
Yet he reached that point of refuge, but how he did so Campian never knew—never will know to his dying day. The superhuman effort; the hellish deafening din of the black flood as it shot past, so near as to splash them, clinging there to the steep rock face, not more than half way up to the place of refuge; of the words of encouragement which he whispered to his half-fainting charge athwart the thunder-roar of the waters, as he literally dragged her up beside him; of the tearing muscles and cracking joints, and blazing, scintillating brain—of all these he has a dim and confused recollection, and can only attribute the accomplishment of the feat to a well nigh superhuman mania of desperation.
Higher still! No time for a pause or rest—no permanent foothold is here—and the waters are still rising. He dared not so much as look down. The daze of the lightning striking upon the rock face aided his efforts. The crash of the thunder peal was as entirely drowned in the bellowing and strident seething of this huge syphoned flood, as though it were silent.
The refuge at last, but what a refuge! Only by the most careful distribution of weight could two persons support themselves on it for any length of time. It was hardly even a ledge, hardly more than a mere unevenness in the rock’s surface. Yet, one of these two persons was a terribly frightened and far from robust girl; the other seemed to have expended air the strength within him in the effort of getting there at all. Thus they clung, mere pigmy atoms against this stupendous cliff wall; suspended over the seething hell of waters that would have churned the life out of them within a moment or so of reaching its surface.
“There! We are safe now!” he gasped, still panting violently after the exertion. “We have only to wait until the water runs off. It will soon do that, you know.”
“No, it will not,” she replied, her blue eyes wide with terror, and shudderingly turning her face to the cliff to avoid the awfulness of the sight. “It may take days. The tangi by the camp took a whole night once. It was the night you came.”
“Well, even then? Upward will have had time to get through safely, ample time, and at the first opportunity they will come for us.”