Down—down fell Wagner,—turning over and over in the hideous vacancy, and clutching vainly at the stunted shrubs and dead roots which projected from the rugged sides of the chasm.
In another moment he was swallowed up by the boiling torrent; but his senses did not leave him, and he felt himself hurried along with the furious speed of the mad waters. Thus nearly a minute passed; and then his headlong course was suddenly arrested by the boughs of a tree, which, having given way at the root, bent over into the torrent. He clung to the boughs as if they were arms stretched out to rescue him; he raised himself from amidst the turbid waters—and in a few moments reached a bank which shelved upward to the edge of a dense forest.
Precisely on the opposite or inner side there was an opening in the rocks, and Wagner’s eye could trace upward a steep but still practicable path, doubtless formed by some torrent of the spring, which was now dried up amidst the mountains above,—that path reaching to the very basis of the volcano.
Thus, had circumstances permitted him to exercise his patience and institute a longer search among the defiles formed by the crags and rocks around the conical volcano, he would have discovered a means of safe egress from that region without daring the desperate leap of the chasm, desperate even for him, although he bore a charmed life, because his limbs might have been broken against the rugged sides of the precipice.
Between the opening to the steep path just spoken of, and the shelving bank on which Wagner now stood, there was so narrow a space, that the bent tree stretched completely across the torrent; thus any one, descending from the mountains by the natural pathway, might cross by means of the tree to the side which Fernand had gained.
“This, then, must have been the route by which the villain Stephano emerged from the mountains,” he said to himself, “and the fiend deceived me when he declared that I could not reach the plains below without his aid.”
Such were his reflections as he hurried up the shelving bank: and when he reached the summit his glance embraced a scene already described to the reader.
For, flying wildly on toward the forest, was his beauteous Nisida, scattering flowers in her whirlwind progress, those flowers that had ere now decked her hair, her neck and her waist.
At some distance behind her was the bandit Stephano; with sword in hand he still maintained the chase, though breathless and ready to sink from exhaustion. Not an instant did Wagner tarry upon the top of the bank which he had reached; but darting toward Nisida, who was now scarce fifty yards from him, he gave vent to an ejaculation of joy.
She saw him—she beheld him: and her speed was checked in an instant with the overpowering emotion of wonder and delight.