“I hope I may never be—”
“No, no, I don’t mean that. I mean the other,” whispered Jack.
“What, about being afraid?” I said. “Well, I’m not ashamed to own it. It may be cramp, Jack Penny, but I feel as if it is sheer fright.”
“Then that’s what must be the matter with my leg,” said Jack eagerly, “only don’t let’s tell the doctor.”
“Ready behind there?” said the latter just then.
“Yes,” I said, “quite ready;” and I passed the word to Jimmy and Aroo, who were close to me.
“Let’s get on then,” said the doctor in a low voice. “I want to get out of this awful gorge.”
“Hooray!” whispered Jack Penny, giving me such a dig with his elbow that for the second time he nearly sent me off the rocky shelf. “Hooray! the doctor’s frightened too, Joe Carstairs. I ain’t ashamed to own it now.”
“Hist!” whispered the doctor then, and slightly raised as was his voice it seemed strangely loud, and went echoing along the side of the chasm.
Going steadily on at once we found the shelf kept wonderfully the same in width, the only variation being that it dipped down close to the rushing water at times, and then curved up till we were fifteen or twenty feet above the stream. With the walls on either side of the river, though, it was different, for they gradually rose higher and higher till there was but a strip of starry sky above our heads, and our path then became so dark that but for the leading of the sure-footed blacks we could not have progressed, but must have come to a halt.