“It looks as if that would apply to you before we’ve finished,” Bella retorted. “If you can’t do anything else, why don’t you help those men in the river?”
Carew made a gesture of resignation and resolutely plunged in.
“That,” laughed Bella, to Millicent and Miss Hume, “is excellent discipline; after a little of it, I believe he’ll do me credit. I can think of a few overfed men that I’d like to put through a drastic course of it, only in their case I’d go in the canoe and take my heaviest luggage with me.”
“It wouldn’t be wise,” asserted Millicent. “When they reached broken water they’d probably let you go.”
She collected an armful of odds and ends and set off up-stream over the portage. The men spent several hours bringing the canoes and stores across, and there followed some laborious poling before they reached the second rapid, which was safely passed. The party was quieter than usual after supper that night. They had had their first glimpse of the strenuous life of the wilderness and it had impressed them. The effect passed off, however, as they pushed on day after day without mishap. Millicent, in particular, delighted in all she saw—the fresh green of the birches among the somber cedars, the lonely heights that ever surrounded them, the gleaming lakes, the broad green flood that here and there filled the gorges with its thunder.
She suffered no discomfort she could not laugh at; there was something that braced her in mind and body in the mountain air; and Clarence no longer held a leading place in her memory. She realized now that the thought of him had hitherto occasioned her a vague uneasiness. Indeed, she was almost glad that he was far away; liberty was unexpectedly sweet, and though she had a few misgivings, she meant to enjoy it while it lasted.
Then one afternoon when they were stopped by a fall, she slipped away from the others with her sketch-book, and wandering back through straggling bush, climbed a rocky ridge. The ascent was steep, but by clambering up a gully she reached the summit, and after strolling along it she sat down to sketch the gorge below. The work absorbed her attention and some time had passed when the lengthening shadows warned her that she would better retrace her steps to camp.
It proved difficult. She could not find the gully she had climbed up and the side of the ridge was almost precipitous and was clothed with brushwood. At last, however, she reached a spot from which it seemed possible to make the descent; but after scrambling and sliding for some distance she was suddenly stopped by a sheer drop of several yards to a ledge. Being agile, she might have reached the ledge by lowering herself by her hands, but it was narrow and slanted outwards, so that she feared to slip off in alighting and fall over the crag below. She attempted to climb back to the summit and found it impossible, for the stones she seized were loose and came away when she disturbed them. She could only stay where she was and call for assistance, though the clamor of the fall, ringing up the valley, almost drowned her voice.
By and by the sunlight faded off the rocks above, the trees below grew shadowy, and Millicent began to feel anxious and to envy the others who would, no doubt, be sitting down to their evening meal. They would miss her and set out in search; but they might not reach her until it was dark, when it would be difficult to extricate her, and she had no desire to spend the night among the rocks. She made another determined attempt to get up, but slid back, nearly slipping over the edge, while her sketch-book went clattering far below. Then she sat still, calling out at intervals.
The light grew dimmer, white mists began to trail about the heights above, and Millicent was getting cold. She was also getting angry—it looked as if the others were too busy eating or talking to care what had become of her; some of them ought to have come in search. She felt a grievance against Lisle in particular. Why she should blame him more than Nasmyth or Carew was not very clear, except that he was more used to the country; but she felt that he ought to have come to her rescue. Then, fearing that she would have to spend the night on the hillside, she carefully crept toward a small level space near a jutting rock and sat down, shivering, while dusk slowly crept across the bush.