“That’s right!” he cried, delighted at this little spark of the old fun loving nature reasserting itself. “But, bar jokes, it really is lowering. I have kept an eye upon certain marks that were covered just now. They are visible again.”
The rain had ceased. The bellowing of the flood was as loud as ever, and but that they were talking into each other’s ears, their voices would have been well nigh inaudible. What he had said was true, and with a great gladness of heart, he recognised the fact.
“No, no! You are only saying that to make me think it is all right,” she answered, the wild eagerness in her tone betraying something of the strain she had undergone. “It can’t be really—is it? Say—is it really?”
“It is really, so far as I can judge. But it has turned so confoundedly dark, one can hardly see anything. Keep up your spirits, child. You have had an adventure, that’s all.”
“Well, you are a good one to share it with,” she murmured. “Tell me, were you ever afraid of anything in your life?”
“I should rather think I was, of heaps of things. I should have been hideously so before we started to climb up here, only there wasn’t time. Oh don’t make any mistake about me. I know what funk is, and that of the bluest kind.”
Thus he talked on, lightly, cheerily, and the girl, if she could not quite forget her numbness and terror and exhaustion, was conscious of no small alleviation of the same. It was pitch dark now, but the thunder of the waters, and the cavernous rattle of the stones and pebbles swept along by their rush, seemed to have abated in volume. An hour went by, then two. Nesta, half asleep, was answering drowsily. The gloom of the great chasm lightened. A full moon had risen over the outside world, and its rays were penetrating even to these forbidding depths. The roaring of the flood had become a mere purling ripple. The water had almost run off.
Campian was becoming frightfully exhausted. Not much longer could he support this strain. Would Upward never arrive? He had succeeded, providentially, in climbing up here, under stress of desperation, but to descend safely now, cramped and exhausted as they both were, would be impossible. A broken neck, or a broken limb or two, would be the sure and certain result of any such attempt.
As the moon-rays brightened, he could make out the bottom of the tangi, and it looked hideously far down, almost as if the rush of water had worn it deeper. It was all seamed and furrowed up, and the water was now babbling down in several little streams. Would help never arrive!
Ha! At last! Voices—native voices—then, although talking in an Oriental tongue, other voices, recognisable as European ones. The sound was coming down the tangi.