Not a word of thanks did he speak, but that grip expressed more eloquently than words his gratitude to Haverly for the prompt action which alone had saved him from a fearful death.
“I assume it’s a case of checkmate,” the American remarked after a few moments, gazing ruefully at the dangling bridge. “We’ll have to get back to the Seal, and bring her round past the mouth of this plaguey river.”
“I suppose there’s no chance of the chasm being narrower higher up,” Seymour hazarded, “so that we might jump it?”
“Not an eyeful of a chance,” was the reply. “You can bet your last dollar that if this yer land-crack was jumpable anywhere hereabouts these wolfish brutes wouldn’t ha’ troubled to sling a bridge across. I take it the sooner we get back to the old boat the better for Garth and the professor. Say, what’s that?”
Far away on the plain beyond the chasm an arch of light arose, flashing and scintillating with dazzling brilliance. High into the darkness it towered, like a golden rainbow, and, as the two men watched in amazement, against its shimmering surface appeared a number of strange, black figures.
A few moments it hung thus, then vanished as mysteriously as it had come.
“Wal,” remarked Silas, “I reckon that’s a real caution. What do you make of it, William?”
But the baronet did not answer. He was puzzling over certain of the figures—weird, animal-like forms—which had appeared upon the arch.
Strangely familiar they seemed to him, yet, try as he might, he could not call to mind where he had seen them before.
He was still pondering the matter when they turned to retrace their steps towards the coast, and Haverly, though not knowing the cause of his abstraction, forbore to question him.