The Peril Finders

by George Manville Fenn

A Welcome Word.

Chris’s lips parted for a cry to escape, but his teeth remained fast set, and there was not a sound for the moment. He was conscious of dropping rapidly down without the slightest change in his position, and then there was a dull heavy shock, when the apparently solid piece of ledge, after being exposed to the atmosphere for ages, crumbled into dust and went on downward with a curious whispering rush along a steep slope instead of over a perpendicular wall. Choking with the dust which arose, rolled over and over and half blinded, Chris was stunned by the confusion of the rush, for how long he could not tell, and then there was a sudden stoppage, and he lay half buried in the débris of the little earthen avalanche.

For a few moments the lad was too much stunned to attempt to move, and lay motionless, trying to pierce the thick dust which closed him in. Then the horror and dread of his position came upon him with terrible force, and he began to struggle violently, increasing the dust, but getting first one arm and then the other free. Then matters grew more easy; he dragged himself sidewise, and shovelfuls of the débris dropped from his hips, while he could feel that his legs were looser. Then another desperate struggle, and he was on the outside of the sloping heap, but only to set the surface in motion again and roll and glide down and down and over and over once more, till he was brought up short in the narrowest part of a wedge-shaped mountain cleft, to begin struggling again, trampling as if rapidly ascending stairs, to avoid being buried by the gliding rubbish still in motion and filling up the bottom of the rift.

The dust was still forming a cloud, but it was floating away, leaving the bare sides of the cleft clear enough for him to see far above him where the ledge ran horizontally along the side of the huge wall; and the change in colour showed him where what seemed to be quite a small portion had dropped away.

Chris’s next effort was to feel himself over and move his limbs, which felt sore, and ached; but he soon found that he was not hurt, and began to try and realise his position.

As far as he could make out he was in a rift of the valley; walls almost completely shut him in on three sides and nearly so on the fourth, but here there was light—bright light—coming through a lightning-shaped, enormous crack which zigzagged downward from a great height, and whose depth below he could not trace.

The position would have been enough to confuse a man at any time, but now after the fall it was tenfold more puzzling than it would have been to one trying to ascend the rock-face. But Chris soon came to the determination that the open valley must be out beyond the zigzag rift, and shaking himself clear of the rubbish which adhered to his garments, he felt that his weapons were all right, and then began to make his way over the fallen stones and earth to the great crack.

“I must be a long way down the cliff,” thought the lad; “but it’s wonderful that I’m not hurt—more,” he added after a pause, for a feeling of stiffness and pain began to trouble him.

With the pain the remembrance of the Indians began to come back from where it had been driven, and instinctively drawing round his rifle, he looked upward; but the edge of the cliff was not visible from where he stood, and there was no fierce-looking warrior upon any ledge drawing his bow to send an arrow whizzing through the air. But all the same Chris instinctively hastened his steps over the yielding débris, seeing as he did that once inside the zigzag rift he would be sheltered from any such danger as that.

The next minute he had left the heaped-up earth and shale, to begin climbing over blocks of hard stone which filled up the bottom of the rift, finding the way difficult, even painful, with the light a very short distance in front, but with jagged masses hanging threateningly overhead and looking as if a touch would bring them thundering down.