“They won’t find us,” she moaned. “You know that place I showed you where Bhallu Khan told us the water had risen high enough to sweep a man off. It was higher than this.”
“I think not I think this is the higher of the two,” he answered mendaciously. In her fear she had not recognised the place, and he would not undeceive her. For his part, he blessed the chance that had put the idea into his head. But for her having narrated the incident as they rode past, it might never have occurred to him that the attempt was feasible, and—what then?
“We mustn’t discount the worst,” he went on.
“The chances of it rising any higher are nil, and even if it does, there is plenty of margin before it reaches us. It isn’t as if it were a case of an incessant and regular downpour. It is only one of those sharp afternoon thunder showers that run off these great slab-like rocks as off a roof on a huge scale. My dear little girl, you must be brave, and thank Heaven we were able to fetch this place at all. Look, I believe it has run off a little lower already.”
“Oh, no—no! I can’t look. It is horrible—horrible!” she answered, as venturing one peep forth, she again hid her face, shuddering.
And in truth her terror was little to be wondered at. It was growing dusk now in the world without, and the roar and hiss of the vast flood coursing with frightful velocity between those grim, cavernous cliffs in the shades, would have tried the nerves of anybody contemplating the scene from the impartial vantage ground of a place of safety. How then did it seem to these two, crouching on a steep slant of rock, whose unevenness alone sustained them in position; cowering over this awful flood, which might at any moment, rising higher, sweep them into a horrible death? And then, that the situation should lose nothing of its terror, Campian noticed, with a sinking of the heart, that the water actually was rising.
Yes. A mark upon the iron-bound face of the opposite cliff, which had caught his attention on first being able to look round, was now covered. Was it the gathering gloom, or had the scratch been washed away? No. The latter was stratified. The water had risen nearly two feet.
The depth at first he judged to be about ten feet. Two more had been added. He fixed another mark. The roaring was already so fearful it could hardly be increased. The hissing, boiling eddies of the rush, leaped over the new mark, then subsided—leaped again, and this time did not subside. They streamed over, hiding it completely. And still the rain poured down pitilessly, and he thought he could detect a peal of thunder above the roar of the waters, which suggested a renewed burst over the very catchment area which had supplied this flood. Well, he had done what he could. The end was not in his hands.
“Oh-h—how cold it is!” moaned Nesta.
“Of course; I was forgetting,” he replied, with great difficulty divesting himself of his coat, for hardly so much as a finger could be spared in the effort involved to hold himself—to hold both of them—in position. But it was done at last, and the garment, all too light, he wrapped around the girl’s shivering form. She uttered a feeble protest, which took not much overruling.