For the roar had seemed to increase and the darkness to grow deeper for the next few yards. The water, too, was nearer, the path having a steep incline downward, with the natural result that the ledge was dripping with moisture, and from time to time some wave would strike the opposite wall with a heavy slap, and the spray fly in quite a gust, as of rain, full in their faces.
“It can’t be much farther,” thought Saxe, as he went cautiously down the incline, to see that the rock on his right now bent right over, and had caused the darkness. Then the path bent to the left, struck off to the right again, and was now down within three or four feet of the water, after which there was a fresh corner to be turned, where the wave that rose up seemed somehow illuminated; but they were quite close up, with the water almost running over the path, before they fully grasped that the light came from the side, bringing with it some hope, even if it were little; and at the same time Saxe felt the possibility of going back the same way now that the full extent of the danger could be grasped.
“Poor Melchior!” he muttered—“it must have been impossible for him to have led the mule through here;” and as he thought, this, the full light of day came streaming in, making Dale, a few yards before him, stand out like a silhouette clearly cut in black, while for a hundred yards the water now ran, rapidly widening and growing less like a torrent, till right away he could see it flowing smoothly between the towering rocks that were piled-up on either side of its bed.
Chapter Ten.
Being used to it.
Dale hurried on, with Saxe close behind him, till they were out of the gloomy schlucht, and scrambling over the rocks by the rapidly widening stream, whose waters had now grown turbid, and were bearing great patches of grey froth upon their surface.
They could see for a couple of hundred yards down the narrow way along which the stream ran; then it bore off to the right and was hidden; and to command a better view, as they eagerly searched the surface for some trace of Melchior, they mounted the tumbled-together rocks, and saw that they were at the head of a widening valley, surrounded by nearly level mountains, forming an oval, which looked like the bed of an ancient lake similar to the one they had lately left. But, in place of deep water, there was a plain of thinly scattered grass growing amongst fragments of rock that looked as if they had been swept down from the mountains round, and serpentining through the level was the swift river, whose course they could trace till it passed through a narrow gap at the far end.
Saxe climbed the higher, and balanced himself on the top of a rough block, which rocked slightly, like a Cornish logan, as he stood shading his eyes and following the course of the stream amongst the huge boulders which often hid it from view; while from his lower position Dale searched the windings nearer to them, hoping to see that which they sought stranded somewhere among the stones.