“Ye have done well, daughter—ye have done well!”
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE FULFILMENT.
When breakfast was finished, Dick proposed that we should go now and look in the full daylight at the effect of the shifting of the bog. I suggested to Norah that perhaps she had better not come as the sight might harrow her feelings, and, besides, that she would want some rest and sleep after her long night of terror and effort. She point blank refused to stay behind, and accordingly we all set out, having now had our clothes dried and changed, leaving only Miss Joyce to take care of the house.
The morning was beautiful and fresh after the storm. The deluge of rain had washed everything so clean that already the ground was beginning to dry, and as the morning sun shone hotly there was in the air that murmurous hum that follows rain when the air is still. And the air was now still—the storm seemed to have spent itself, and away to the West there was no sign of its track, except that the great Atlantic rollers were heavier and the surf on the rocks rose higher than usual.
We took our way first down the hill, and then westward to the Shleenanaher, for we intended, under Dick’s advice, to follow, if possible, up to its source the ravine made by the bog. When we got to the entrance of the Pass we were struck with the vast height to which the bog had risen when its mass first struck the portals. A hundred feet overhead there was the great brown mark, and on the sides of the Pass the same mark was visible, declining quickly as it got seaward and the Pass widened, showing the track of its passage to the sea.
We climbed the rocks and looked over. Norah clung close to me, and my arm went round her and held her tight as we peered over and saw where the great waves of the Atlantic struck the rocks three hundred feet below us, and were for a quarter of a mile away still tinged with the brown slime of the bog.
We then crossed over the ravine, for the rocky bottom was here laid bare, and so we had no reason to fear waterholes or pitfalls. A small stream still ran down the ravine and, shallowing out over the shelf of rock, spread all across the bottom of the Pass, and fell into the sea—something like a miniature of the Staubach Fall, as the water whitened in the falling.
We then passed up on the west side of the ravine, and saw that the stream which ran down the centre was perpetual—a live stream, and not merely the drainage of the ground where the bog had saturated the earth. As we passed up the hill we saw where the side of the slope had been torn bodily away, and the great chasm where once the house had been which Murdock took from Joyce, and so met his doom. Here there was a great pool of water—and indeed all throughout the ravine were places where the stream broadened into deep pools, and again into shallow pools where it ran over the solid bed of rock. As we passed up, Dick hazarded an explanation or a theory:—
“Do you know it seems to me that this ravine or valley was once before just as it is now. The stream ran down it and out at the Shleenanaher just as it does now. Then by some landslips, or a series of them, or by a falling tree, the passage became blocked, and the hollow became a lake, and its edges grew rank with boggy growth; and then, from one cause and another—the falling in of the sides, or the rush of rain storms carrying down the detritus of the mountain, and perpetually washing down particles of clay from the higher levels—the lake became choked up; and then the lighter matter floated to the top, and by time and vegetable growth became combined. And so the whole mass grew cohesive and floated on the water and slime below. This may have occurred more than once. Nay, moreover, sections of the bog may have become segregated or separated by some similarity of condition affecting its parts, or by some formation of the ground, as by the valley narrowing in parts between walls of rock so that the passage could be easily choked. And so, solid earth formed to be again softened and demoralized by the later mingling with the less solid mass above it. It is possible, if not probable, that more than once, in the countless ages that have passed, this ravine has been as we see it—and again as it was but a few hours ago!”
No one had anything to urge against this theory, and we all proceeded on our way.