While he did so, Juanna turned and looked behind her. Far below them she could see the forms of Olfan and his companions standing shoulder to shoulder, and even catch the gleams of light reflected from their spears, for now the sun was rising. Beneath them again she saw the grass-grown roofs of that earthly hell, the City of the People of the Mist, and the endless plain beyond through which the river wandered like a silver serpent. There also was the further portion of the huge wall of the temple built by unknown hands in forgotten years, and rising above the edge of that gap in the cliff through which she was looking, appeared a black mass which she knew to be the head and shoulders of the hideous colossus, on whose dizzy brow she had sat in that strange hour when the shouting thousands thundered a welcome to her as their goddess, and whence her most beloved friend, Francisco, had been hurled to his cruel death.
“Oh, what I have suffered in that place!” she thought to herself. “How have I lived through it, I wonder? And yet I have won something,” and she glanced at Leonard who was driving Nam towards her, “and if only we survive and I am the means of enabling him to fulfil his vow and buy back his home with these jewels, I shall not regret all that I have endured to win them. Yes, even when he is no longer so very much in love, he must always be grateful to me, for few women will have done as much for their husbands.”
Then Nam staggered past her, hissing curses, while the untiring Otter rained blows upon his back, and losing sight of Olfan and his companions they went on in safety, till they reached the neck and saw the ice-bridge glittering before them and the wide fields of snow beyond.
Chapter XXXVIII.
THE TRIUMPH OF NAM
“Which way are we to go now?” said Juanna; “must we climb down this great gulf?”
“No, Shepherdess,” answered Otter; “see, before you is a bridge,” and he pointed to the band of ice and rock which traversed the wide ravine.
“A bridge?” gasped Juanna, “why it is as slippery as a slide and steep as the side of a house. A fly could not keep its footing on it.”
“Look here, Otter,” put in Leonard, “either you are joking or you are mad. How can we cross that place? We should be dashed to pieces before we had gone ten yards.”
“Thus, Baas: we must sit each of us on one of the flat stones that lie round here, then the stone will take us across of itself. I know, for I have tried it.”
“Do you mean to tell me that you have been over there on a rock?”