Striking a damp Match.
Mark Roche turned cold—not the cold of contact with ice, but what may be termed in contradistinction to muscular cold, a mental freezing of the nerves with horror. For how long a space of time he could not afterwards have told, he stood bending over what he felt must be some horrible depth down which his cousin had fallen, to be plunged into deep water at the bottom. Every faculty was chained save that of hearing as he listened, waiting for some fresh disturbance of the depths below by Dean rising to the surface to begin struggling for life.
And all this time he could not cry out for help. It seemed to him as if he could not have breathed for the icy hand that was clutching him at the throat.
There were moments when he could not even think, when it seemed to be unreal, a nightmare-like dream of suffering when he had been called upon to bear the horror of knowing that his cousin had died a horrible death, while he could not even feel that it was his duty to climb down somewhere into the darkness where he might be able to extend to the poor fellow a saving hand as he rose.
But all was still; the last faint whisperings of the water against the rocky sides had died out. Not a sound arose. He could not even hear his own breath. And then all at once he uttered a gasp as he expired the breath he had held, and thud, thud, thud, thud, he felt his heart leap the pulsations keeping on now at a tremendous rate as they beat against his quivering breast.
He might have been dead during the moments that had passed. Now he was wildly alive, for, as if by the magic touch of a magician’s wand, he had been brought back to himself, as in a slow, awestricken whisper Dean uttered the words, from somewhere apparently close below, “Mark! Did you hear that?”
Once more the lad could not reply, and Dean’s voice rose again, loudly and wildly agitated now.
“Mark! Are you there? Did you hear that?”
“Yes, yes,” gasped the boy. “Oh, Dean, old fellow, I thought it was you that had gone down!”
“No; but wasn’t it an escape? I began to climb, and a big stone upon which I had trusted myself went down with that horrible splash; but I kept hold of the side, and I am all right yet. But oh, how you frightened me! I began to think, the same as you did, that it was you who had fallen, in spite of knowing that it was the stone. But being here in the darkness makes one so nervous.”