It has been the lot of many men to look upon a horror accomplished or so nearly accomplished that any reversal of the decree of fate seemed to be beyond hope. Such is the gaze upon the strewn dead of the battle-field, before the life has quite gone out from a few who are already worse than dead, and when the groans and the cries for "water!" to cool the lips parched in the last fever, have not yet entirely ceased. Such is the hopeless glance at the windrow of dead strewing the shore when a ship is going to pieces in the surf, in plain sight and yet beyond the aid of human hands, and when every moment is adding another to the drowned and ghastly subjects for the rough-coated Coroner. Such is the stony regard at the crushed victims of a railroad catastrophe, or the charred and blackened remains of those who were but a little while ago living passengers on the steamboat that is just burning at the water's edge. Such, even, is the shuddering glance at the brave and unconscious firemen who stand beneath a heavy wall, when that wall is surging forward and coming down in a crushing mass upon their very heads, with no power except a miracle of Omnipotence to prevent their being flattened into mere pan-cakes of flesh, and blood, and bone. All these, and a thousand others, are horrors accomplished or beyond hope of being averted; and they are enough to sicken the heart and brain of humanity brought into sudden familiarity with them. But perhaps they are not the worst—perhaps that yet unaccomplished but probable horror is still more terrible, because uncertainty blends with it and there is yet enough of hope to leaven despair. The life not yet fully forfeited, but going—going; the form not yet crushed out of the human semblance, but to be so in a moment unless that one chance intervenes; the face—especially if the face be that of woman, a thousand times more beautiful in the relief of that hideous mask of death which the gazer sees glooming behind it,—this is perhaps the hardest thing of all to see and not go mad.
None of these conditions may have been quite fulfilled in the glance cast backward by Horace Townsend at that moment; but let us see how far the situation varied from the most terrible of requirements.
Going over that back-bone in the morning, the lawyer, who chanced to be for the moment alone, had swung himself from his horse, leaving the animal standing in the trough, peered through the bushes to the right, down into Oakes' Gulf, and walked to the edge of the broad stone that formed the projection over the Gulf of Mexico. He had found that stone smooth and rounded, a little slippery from the almost perpetual rains and mists beating upon it, not more than eight to ten feet wide from the path to the verge, and with a perceptible slope downwards in the latter direction. He had thought, then, that it needed a clear head and a sure foot (both of which he possessed) to stand in that position or even to tread the stone at any distance from the path. And so thinking, he had swung himself back into the saddle and ridden on,—the incident, then, not worth relating—now, a thing of the most fearful consequence.
For as he glanced back, at that sudden cry, he saw Clara Vanderlyn sitting her horse on the very top of that smooth plateau of stone overlooking the two thousand feet of the Gulf of Mexico, at what could not have been more than four or five feet from the awful verge, and certainly on the downward slope of what was an insecure footing even for the plastic foot of man—much more for the clumsy iron-shod hoof!
What could have induced her trained pony to spring out from the path a few feet behind and rush into that perilous elevation, must ever remain (in the absence of an equine lexicon) quite as much of a mystery as it seemed at that moment. Perhaps it was in going down some such declivity of path as that before him, that he had been kicked by the vicious bay of Frank Vanderlyn while making the ascent, and that he had concluded to wait on this convenient shelf until all the rest had gone by, before he consented to make the passage with his fair burthen. Perhaps the movement was merely one of those unaccountable freaks of sullen madness in which horses as well as men sometimes have the habit of indulging. At all events, such was the situation; and the recollection of it, as thus recalled to those who were present, will be quite enough, as we are well aware, to set the heart beating most painfully. What, then, must have been the feeling of all who saw, and especially of that man who had promised to protect the fair being thus placed in peril! What thoughts of the playful threat of Halstead Rowan must have rushed through his brain—that "if she got into any kind of a scrape by riding with a man who couldn't ride," such and such fatal results would follow! Not a duel with the Illinoisan—oh, no!—but a black, terrible, life-long duel with his own self-reproaches and remorse for heedlessness and want of judgment—this would be the doom more fearful than a thousand personal chastisements, if danger became destruction. One clumsy movement of the horse's feet, one slip on the stone, and she would as certainly go over that dizzy precipice and fall so crushed and mangled a mass into the gulf below that her fragments could scarcely be distinguished from those of the pony she rode—as certainly as she had grace and love and beauty crowning her life and adding to the possible horror of her death. He did not know, then, how many of the cavalcade saw the situation, or how the blood of most who saw stood still like his own, with dread and apprehension.
The inconceivable rapidity of human thought has been so often made a matter of comment, that words could but be wasted in illustrating it. It shames the lightning and makes sluggard light itself. All these thoughts in the mind of Horace Townsend scarcely consumed that time necessary to draw rein and turn himself round in the saddle in a quick attempt to alight, rush up the side of the rock and seize her horse by the bridle or swing her from her seat. He had no irresolution—no moment of hesitation—he only thought and suffered in that single instant preceding action.
"For God's sake do not move! I will be there in one instant!" he said in a low, hoarse, intense voice that reached her like a trumpet's clang.
"Oh yes—quick! quick!" he heard her reply, in a convulsive, frightened voice. "Oh, quick!—you don't know where I am!"
Poor girl!—he did know where she was, too well.
She was braver than most women, or she would probably have jerked the bridle or frightened her horse by frantic cries, and sent him slipping with herself down the ravine; for the situation was a most fearful one, and there are few women who could have braved it without a tremor. A man, let it be remembered, if cruel enough, might have alighted and left the horse to its fate; but to a woman, encumbered by her long clothes, the attempt must have been almost certain destruction for both.