Then on and on again, with the horror of the terrible place seeming to crush them down, while to Saxe it was as if the waters were trying to leap at him to wash him from the narrow ledge and bear him away. And the farther they went on the more fearful the place seemed to grow. The walls dripped with moisture, as a result of the spray which rose from the hurrying race, and shut them in back and front with a gloomy mist, which struck cold and dank as it moistened their faces and seemed choking to breathe.
Again Dale paused, to peer down at one of the great whirling pools beneath the rock, which was being undermined in this place more than ever; and as Saxe clung by him and gazed down too, there was the perfectly round pool of water, with its central pipe, which, by the optical illusion caused by the gloom and mist, looked reversed—that is, as if the concavity were convex, and he were gazing at the eye of some subterranean monster, the effect being made more realistic by the rock overhanging it like a huge brow.
“Come on,” cried Dale. But Saxe was fascinated, and did not hear his voice in the hollow, echoing, pipe-like roar.
“Come on, boy—quick!” he shouted again. But Saxe still bent down over the racing waters, to stare at that awful similitude of an eye, which moved strangely and bemused and fascinated him so that he looked as if he would be drawn down into it and be a victim to the awful place.
“Saxe! Saxe!” shouted Dale, seizing him by the arm; and the boy started and gazed at him wildly. “Can you see him!”
“No, no,” cried the boy.
“What were you looking at!”
“That! that!” gasped Saxe.
“Ah! yes. Like some terrible eye. Come along. I can’t think that anything would stay here. It would be swept along at a tremendous rate. That water is going almost at the rate of a great fall. They must have been borne right through long ago.”
“Think so?” Saxe tried to say. Certainly his lips moved; and roused now from the strange fascination, he crept on after his leader, their progress being very slow in spite of their anxiety, for all was new and strange, and the next step, for aught they knew, might plunge them down to a fall like their guide’s.