The path rose and fell—rose and fell slightly in an undulating fashion, but it did not alter much in its width as we journeyed on for what must have been quite a mile, when we had to halt for a few minutes while the bearers readjusted their loads. And a weird party we looked as we stood upon that shelf of rock, with the perpendicular side of the gorge towering straight up black towards the sky, the summit showing plainly against the starry arch that spanned the river, and seemed to rest upon the other side of the rocky gorge fifty yards away. And there now, close to our feet, so close that we could have lain down and drunk had we been so disposed, rushed on towards the great fall the glassy gold-speckled water.
I was thinking what an awful looking place it was, and wondering whether my father had ever passed this way, when Jack Penny made me jump by giving me a poke with the barrel of his gun.
“Don’t do that,” I said angrily, for I felt that I might have slipped, and to have fallen into that swiftly gliding water meant being borne at headlong speed to the awful plunge down into the basin of foam into which I had looked that day.
“Oh, all right!” whispered Jack. “I only wanted to tell you that it must be cramp.”
“What must be cramp?” I replied.
“Don’t speak so loud, and don’t let the doctor hear you,” whispered Jack. “I mean in one of my legs: it will keep waggling so and giving way at the knee.”
“Why, Jack!” I said.
“No, no,” he whispered hastily, “it ain’t that. I ain’t a bit afraid. It’s cramp.”
“Well, if you are not afraid,” I whispered back, “I am. I hope, Jack, I may never live to be in such an awful place again.”
“I say, Joe Carstairs, say that once more,” whispered Jack excitedly.