“Oh-h, I say,” whispered Harry. “Fancy never showing us this before!” He cast himself on the ground and lay, chin in hands, gazing at the wonder before him.
“We kept it to the last,” said Norah softly. She sat down by him and the others followed their example.
“Just think,” said Harry, “that old creek’s been doing that ever since time began—every day the sun comes to take his share at lighting it up, long before we were born, and ages after we shall die! Doesn’t it make you feel small!”
Norah nodded understandingly. “I saw it once by moonlight,” she said. “Dad and I rode here one night—full moon. Oh, it was lovely! Not like this, of course, because there wasn’t any colour—but a beautiful white, clean light, and the fall was like a sheet of silver.”
“Did you ever throw anything over?” asked Wally. His wonderment was subsiding and the boy in him woke up again.
“No good,” said Jim. “You never see it again. I’ve thrown a stick in up above, and it simply whisks over and gets sucked underneath the curtain of water at once, and disappears altogether until it reaches the smooth water, ever so far down.”
“Say you went over yourself?”
“Wouldn’t be much left of you,” Jim answered, with a laugh. “The bed of the creek’s simply full of rocks—you can see a spike sticking up here and there in the rapids. We’ve seen sheep come down in flood-time—they get battered to bits. I don’t think I’ll try any experiments, thank you, young Wally.”
“You always were a disobliging critter,” Wally grinned.
“Another time a canoe came over,” Jim said. “It belonged to two chaps farther up—they’d just built it, and were out for the first time, and got down too near the falls. They didn’t know much about managing their craft, and when the suck of the water began to take them along they couldn’t get out of the current. They went faster and faster, struggling to paddle against the stream, instead of getting out at an angle and making for the bank—which they might have done. At last they could hear the roar of the falls quite plainly.”