“Ye’ll have to go over it all agin, Mike. Here’s his ’an’r, that is just death on to bogs—an’ the like,” he added, looking at me slyly.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Oh, not much, yer ’an’r, except that the bog up at Knocknacar has run away intirely. Whin the wather rose in it, the big cuttin’ we med tuk it all out, like butthermilk out iv a jug. Begor! there never was seen such a flittin’ since the wurrld begun. An’ more betoken, the quare part iv it is that it hasn’t left the bit iv a hole behind it at all, but it’s all mud an’ wather at the prisint minit.”
I knew this would interest Dick exceedingly, so I went for him. When he heard it he got quite excited, and insisted that we should go off to Knocknacar at once. Accordingly Andy was summoned, the mare was harnessed, and with what protection we could get in the way of wraps, we went off to Knocknacar through the rain storm.
As we went along we got some idea of the damage done—and being done—by the wonderful rainfall. Not only the road was like a river, and the mountain streams were roaring torrents, but in places the road was flooded to such a dangerous depth that we dared not have attempted the passage only that, through our repeated journeys, we all knew the road so well.
However, we got at last to Knocknacar, and there found that the statement we heard was quite true. The bog had been flooded to such a degree that it had burst out through the cutting which we had made, and had poured in a great stream over all the sloping moorland on which we had opened it. The brown bog and black mud lying all over the stony space looked like one of the lava streams which mark the northern side of Vesuvius. Dick went most carefully all over the ground wherever we could venture, and took a number of notes. Indeed, the day was beginning to draw in, when, dripping and chilled, we prepared for our return journey through the rain. Andy had not been wasting his time in the sheebeen, and was in one of his most jocular humours; and when we too were fortified with steaming hot punch we were able to listen to his fun without wanting to kill him.
On the journey back, Dick—when Andy allowed him speech—explained to me the various phenomena which we had noticed. When we got back to the hotel it was night. Had the weather been fine we might have expected a couple more hours of twilight; but with the mass of driving clouds overhead, and the steady downpour of rain, and the fierce rush of the wind, there was left to us not the slightest suggestion of day.
We went to bed early, for I had to rise by daylight for our journey on the morrow. After lying awake for some time listening to the roar of the storm and the dash of the rain, and wondering if it were to go on for ever, I sank into a troubled sleep.
It seemed to me that all the nightmares which had individually afflicted me during the last week returned to assail me collectively on the present occasion. I was a sort of Mazeppa in the world of dreams. Again and again the fatal hill and all its mystic and terrible associations haunted me!—Again the snakes writhed around and took terrible forms! Again she I loved was in peril! Again Murdock seemed to arise in new forms of terror and wickedness! Again the lost treasure was sought under terrible conditions; and once again I seemed to sit on the table-rock with Norah, and to see the whole mountain rush down on us in a dread avalanche, and turn to myriad snakes as it came! And again Norah seemed to call to me, “Help! help! Arthur! Save me! Save me!” And again, as was most natural, I found myself awake on the floor of my room—though this time I did not scream—wet and quivering with some nameless terror, and with Norah’s despairing cry in my ears.
But even in the first instant of my awakening I had taken a resolution which forthwith I proceeded to carry into effect. These terrible dreams—whencesoever they came—must not have come in vain! The grim warning must not be despised! Norah was in danger, and I must go to her at all hazards!