“Yes, I can hear,” said Saxe, as he listened to the strange musical gurgle of running waters somewhere far down below the blocks which had fallen from the sides of the chasm.
He started on climbing from stone to stone—some planted solidly, others so nearly poised that they rocked beneath his feet.
“One good thing,” he cried breathlessly: “you can’t fall any lower. How narrow the place is!”
It grew narrower still before they reached the spot where the place ended in the cleft in the face of the black rock; but, just as the boy had said, there was a fold of the chasm, quite a knife-edge of stone round, and beyond which the stream came gurgling down, and apparently going directly upward to the right.
“There!” cried Saxe. “What did I tell you? This is the way up. Shall I go on?”
“Yes, a little way; but I did not reckon on these difficulties. We will only explore a little to-day. To-morrow we can come straight here earlier, and take our time.”
The place was narrower than ever now, and the rocks rose perpendicularly, so high that the place was almost in twilight. It was nearly a repetition of the chasm up which they had come, save that one side was the mountain itself, the other a portion split off.
The mountain side proving the easier, as the stones in the bottom grew more massive and difficult to climb, the boy took to the slope, and made such rapid progress that Dale was left behind; and he was about to shout to Saxe not to hurry, when he saw that the boy was waiting some eighty or ninety yards in advance, and high up above the bottom of the gorge along which Dale had proceeded in a slower and surer way.
Dale went on till he was right below the boy, and then stopped to wipe his forehead.
“Let’s get back, Saxe,” he said: “there may be traces of this narrow crack going right round the mountain. Ready?”