“There, old fellow,” he said, grimly, as he bound up my arm. “Can you walk?”
I nodded; and seeming to gather strength each moment, I followed him down into the ravine, where we found that two of the men were quite dead, while the other was in a dying state, but he struck at us savagely with his knife whenever we tried to approach.
I saw Abel’s hand playing angrily with the butt of his revolver, and but for me I believe he would have shot the fellow as he lay, but I hurried him on, and we cautiously proceeded for about a hundred yards, but this time without our dog to track, for the poor brute was lying bleeding to death, shot through the lungs.
All at once there was a shot from a little gully on our right, when Abel threw up his arms and let fell his gun, which exploded as it fell, and then the poor fellow staggered, and went down upon his face.
I did not stop to think that the next bullet might find its billet in my heart, but dashed forward towards the spot from whence the shot had been fired, and directly after I was face to face with an enemy. He was sitting with his back supported by a block of stone, and his gun across his knees, glaring at me with a look of the bitterest hate, and a moment’s reflection would have told me that he was wounded unto the death, but in the anger and heat of the moment there was no pausing for thought, and the next moment both barrels of my gun, held pistol-wise, were discharged into his breast.
I ran back to Abel, and raised his head, but with a sickening, deathly feeling, I again let it fall, for the expression of his wild and staring eyes told too well how true had been the aim—the last sting of the dying viper; and when I somewhat recovered, it was to cover the body with fragments of stone, to keep off the birds, and then, weak and faint, I struggled on after the two mounted men.
But a change had now come over the scene; the wind tore furiously overhead, while where I was toiling along it was a perfect calm. Then came the rain—a few big drops, then a cessation; then again a loud and furious howling of the wind; then a calm; while, piled up in huge, lurid, black masses, the clouds seemed to shut out the light of day, save when they were rent asunder by some jagged flash of lightning of a vivid violet hue. Ever and anon there was a glare of light playing behind the clouds, lighting them up in the most glorious way, so that the rolling massy-looking vapours were displayed in all their grandeur, while along the edges, quivering and darting, there was an incessant tremulous light of every brilliant sunset hue. Now came the thunder in a mighty diapason, rolling along the ravine, and seeming as if the sound split and crumbled upon the bare summits of the range of mountains, while fragments of the giant peal were scattered, and came hurrying along the ravine. Then, again, burst after burst of huge, bellowing, metallic peals rumbling hollow and deafening as though discharged from some vast cannon mouth. Blackness again, as if it were night; till in a few seconds came again a blinding flash, displaying the wild aspect of the glen, but only to leave it darker than before; and now again a few drops of rain, pattering upon the dry ground, and splashing from the surface of the lichen-covered rocks, then a sharp fall as of a thunder shower, and I crept beneath the shelter of an overhanging rock, while I hastily covered the lock of my gun, and tried to load it with my one uninjured hand, when again came the lightning playing down the ravine, then black darkness and bellowing, deafening thunder, and then down came the rain—not pouring—not streaming, but in one huge cataract of hissing and foaming waters, as though, indeed, the heavens were opened and the fountains of the great deep broken up. It was as though to have stood beneath it for a moment would have been to be beaten down and swept helplessly away by the waters bubbling and foaming at my feet.
But how refreshing and cooling it seemed as I bathed my fevered brow and moistened the handkerchief hastily bound round my bleeding arm; while, though stopped from continuing my pursuit, I knew that it was impossible for the fugitives to proceed, and I waited anxiously for the cessation of the storm.
Once there came a lull, but only for a few moments, while the brilliant rose-coloured and violet lightning played around, when down came the rain again, more violently than ever, as though it would never cease. The ravine had been turned into a little river, once again towards which, winding in and out amidst the huge blocks of rock, hundreds of watercourses were hurrying. Now it was black darkness, and nothing visible, and the next moment again flaming swords appeared to cut through the rain, and light up the ravine with every rainbow tint; and still came that deafening mighty rushing sound of the waters, as though I were standing upon the spray-wet rock beneath Niagara.
I was standing where a weather-stained mass jutted out from the rocky side and protected me from the heavy fall, but from every jagged and time-worn point around the water streamed down as it leaped and plunged from the mountain side into the ravine. At some early epoch in the world’s history, the earth must have divided in some awful internal throe, and then imperfectly closing, have left this long rift forming a watercourse in the rainy season, but in the dry-time merely a stony bed, with here and there a pool. Save where the rains had washed away, and masses of rock had fallen, the sides showed how once they had been torn asunder, and displayed prominence and indentation at every bend.