Each man felt as if he ought to shout the lad’s name, and ask him to give some token of his whereabouts, but no one dared open his lips for the dread of the answer to the calls being only the echoes from the rocks above, while beneath there was the dull, hurrying roar of the torrent which rose and fell, seeming to fill the air with a curious hissing sound, and making the earth vibrate beneath their feet.
They were separating, with the tension of pain upon their minds seeming more than they could bear, when, all at once, from far above, there was a cry which made them start and gaze upward.
“Ahoy–y–oy!”
There was nothing visible, and they remained perfectly silent—listening, and feeling that they must have been mistaken; but just then a stone came bounding down, to fall some fifty feet in front, right on to a mass of rock, and split into a score of fragments.
Then again:
“Ahoy! Where are you all?”
“Lawrence, ahoy!” shouted the professor, with his hands to his mouth.
“Ahoy!” came again from directly overhead. “Here. How am I to get down?”
All started back as far as they could to gaze upward, and then remained silent, too much overcome by their emotion to speak, for there, perched up at least a thousand feet above them, stood Lawrence in an opening among the trees, right upon a shelf of rock. They could see his horse’s head beside him, and the feeling of awe and wonder at the escape had an effect upon the party below as if they had been stunned.
“How—am—I—to—get—down?” shouted Lawrence again.