“Yes, and I’d help you,” said Cyril despairingly; “but we dare not move in this terrible darkness.”
“Shall we try to go back, sir?”
“No,” shouted Cyril firmly. “We must not do that.”
“What then, sir? What can we do?”
“Wait for daylight,” Cyril shouted back in the man’s ear. Then softly to himself: “And pray.”
Chapter Twenty.
Waiting for Daylight.
As John Manning afterwards said, those were hours to make a man’s hair turn grey, and to Cyril every minute seemed to be indefinitely prolonged, as he stood till he felt his knees begin to give way beneath him, and finally sank cautiously down upon them—John Manning imitating his movement—till they both rested upon wet, slippery rock.