'Good heaven!' exclaimed Captain Clavering, 'there is some one over the fall—or in it. Did you not hear a voice? There it is again!'
'Dioul! I have heard it twice already, but thought it was a hart roaring in the forest,' said Callum; 'and here are the hoofmarks of a pony, fresh in the turf, at the very edge of the Fall.'
'Help!' cried a piteous voice, which ascended from the abyss beneath us, and sounded above the hiss and roar of the hurrying waters; 'help, in the name of the blessed God!'
'Merciful heaven, it is Sir Horace!' exclaimed Captain Clavering, peering over.
'Aw—aw, good gwacious—gwacious goodness! aw-aw, what a dreadful situation!' added Snobleigh, aghast.
Upon a ledge of rock that jutted over the fall about twenty feet below the plateau on which we stood, lay the unfortunate baronet, crouching in a place where the beetling rocks rose above him, and where they descended sheer below to a depth which the eye and mind shrank from contemplating. His pony had become unmanageable, or disliked the severity with which it was whipped and spurred; thus on getting the bit between its teeth, it scoured along the terrible ridge of the Craig-na-tuirc like the wind, and rushed headlong towards the cascade. In deadly terror, the portly baronet had thrown himself off this fierce and shaggy little charger, but too late; he was just at the edge of the fall over which the pony went headlong like a flying Pegasus. Desperately Sir Horace clung to the bracken and heather on the verge of the chasm; but both gave way, and he toppled over!—sight, sound, hearing, and sensation left him as he fell into the abyss, believing all was over; but the sharp, cool, smoky spray revived him, and on recovering, he found himself safely and softly shelved on a turf-covered ledge of rock, from which an ascent unaided was totally impracticable, as the cliff above him was a sheer wall of twenty feet high; and a safe descent was equally impossible, for below, two hundred feet and more, pouring like ceaseless thunder, the cascade roared, boomed, boiled, and whirled; he shut his eyes, and for the first time since childhood, perhaps, endeavoured to arrange his thoughts in prayer.
Imagine the sensations of this right honourable baronet, and M.P. for 'the gentlemanly interest'—this old Regent-street lounger and man-about-town, accustomed to all the butterfly enjoyment, the ease, elegance, and luxury wealth can procure, and London furnish, on finding himself at midnight in the region of old romance and much imaginary barbarism—-in the land of caterans, brownies, and bogles, cowering like a water-rat on a narrow ledge of rock, and on the verge of that tremendous cascade!
Prayer was difficult, new, and unnatural to him; he closed his eyes, and after shouting hopelessly and vainly, he endeavoured not to think at all; terror absorbed all his faculties, and now were he to live for a thousand years he could never forget the miseries and horrors he endured.
His senses wandered, and while the endless linn, stunning and dashing, poured in full flood and mighty volume over the trembling rocks, at one time he imagined himself addressing the House on the Abjuration Oath, the Scottish Appellate Jurisdiction, or some other equally sane and useful institution; or at the opera listening to Mario, Alboni, or Piccolomini; now it was the voice of his daughter, and then the laugh of his ward, Fanny Clavering. The quaint wild stories of the Highland foresters flitted before him, and while strange voices seemed to mingle with the ceaseless roar of that eternal cataract; damp kelpies sprawled their long and clammy fingers over him; paunchy imps and bearded brownies swarmed about his ears like gnats in the moonshine; while grey spectres seemed to peer and jabber at him, from amid the pouring foam and impending rocks.
He grew sick and faint with fear and hopelessness, for he was a cold, proud, and narrow-hearted man; hence the agony of his mind was the greater when he found himself face to face, and front to front, with Death!