Hours passed away; they seemed months, years, ages, still he remained there in a state of torpor and coma. He might fall into the stream; then all would be over; he might linger on for days, his cries unheard, for the country was desolate and depopulated—for days until he perished of slow starvation, and his bones would be left to whiten on that shelf of rock after his flesh had been carried away by the hawks and eagles!
'Horror! horror!' he exclaimed, and shut his eyes.
Suddenly, voices that seemed human met his ear!
He uttered a wild cry for mercy and for succour and the loud Highland haloo of Callum Mac Ian responded. By a lucky chance we had discovered the lost man, when every hope was dying in his arid heart.
A mountain-ash, the sinewy roots of which grasped the fissures of the rocks, and were knotted round them, overhung the chasm, and from this Callum, supported by Clavering and me—the captain was a brave, active, and athletic fellow—lowered down a stout rope, which we desired Sir Horace to tie securely round him; but he was so paralyzed by fear, or so benumbed by cold, that though we reiterated the request again and again, with all the energy his urgent danger could inspire, we were unheeded.
'Dioul! 'smeas so na'n t-alam!' (the devil! this is worse than alum!) grumbled Callum in Gaelic; this old fellow will have the cat's departure in the cascade if he closes his ears thus!'
'What in heaven's name shall we do?' asked Captain Clavering; 'good fellows, can't you advise?'
'Go down into the cascade,' said I.
'Eh—aw—the deuce! good gwacious, you cawnt mean that,' said Snobleigh, with a chill shudder; 'deaw me—what a boaw!'
'He does mean it,' replied Callum, coldly; 'but that shall be my task, for though his spirit is brave, his arm is less strong than mine, and I shall meet the danger first. It was our task of old—I am his co-dhalta, and come of race that were the leine chrios of his father's on many a bloody field—but I forget that you are Englishmen, and know not what I speak of.'