“Call it nervousness,” said Dale. “No: call it fear or fright. Of course I imagined that at any moment the poor fellow might turn giddy and fall. But if that beam had been lying on the pavement, any one would have walked or run along it without hesitation, for there is no question of balancing on a piece of flat wood ten inches wide. The imagination is the danger.”
“Then sailors can’t have any imagination,” said Saxe thoughtfully.
“It is to be hoped not, of that kind. If they ever thought of falling, they would never be able to run along the yards of a big ship as they do.”
“Well, I’ll try and not have any imagination,” said Saxe. “I shouldn’t like you to say you wished that you had not brought me, for you could not go anywhere you wanted because I was such a coward.”
“I trust to you to be neither cowardly nor rash,” said Dale, “and you may trust to me not to take you into more dangerous places than I can help. But it really is a matter of habit. Why, people never think of the danger, but every time they run up or downstairs they risk a severe fall; and I once knew of a sailor lad, accustomed to go aloft and climb over the bulwarks into the main chains or the rigging under the bowsprit, who would pull all the clothes off his bed of a night and make them up on the floor, because he was afraid of tumbling out of bed in the night. Hah! we are getting near the end of the lake. Why, Saxe, it does look black and deep!”
“But I don’t see any place where it runs out,” said Saxe. “There ought to be a river or a waterfall here, oughtn’t there!”
“Wait a few minutes, and we shall see. Ah! to be sure—there it is; the sides are so close together that they hardly show, but you can see now where the ledge runs, right to that corner.”
A hundred yards farther along the narrow ledge—a fault in the strata which formed that side of the lake—and all doubt of their being at the exit of the waters was at rest, for Melchior stopped short where the ledge widened into a little platform at the angle of the rock forming one of the sides of a mere crack in the titanic wall of perpendicular mountain, which in places actually overhung them, and ran up fully a thousand feet.
The opening where they stood was some twenty feet wide, and through it the waters of the lake poured with a low rushing sound, which seemed to deepen farther in to a roar.
Saxe was pressing forward to look in at the opening; but Melchior met them and pointed back over the lake, at the head of which rose a huge mountain mass, snow-clad and glistening, on either side of which glaciers could be seen running sharply down, while away on the left another winding, frozen river descended.