He succeeded in turning it upside down on the beach.
“Goodness! What a miracle it was we didn’t go to the bottom!” he thought to himself.
It was not a matter of an ordinary crack, easy to stop up, but of a whole plank rotted, of a plank also which had been recently inserted in the bottom of the boat and only fastened by four nails.
Who had done this? At first Ralph thought of the Marquess de Talencay. But with what object would the old gentleman have acted in this manner? What reason was there for thinking that d’Asteux’s friend desired to bring about a catastrophe at the very moment at which the young girl was brought to him? [[270]]
Then another question presented itself: by what road was Talencay coming to the place now that he had no boat at his service? From what quarter would he arrive? Was there a way by land which came down to this beach?
He started to look for it. There was no possible way of getting out on the left: there were the obstacles of the two waterfalls in addition to the obstacles of the cliff. But on the right, just above where the cliff dipped into the lake and formed the beach, twenty steps had been cut in the rock and from the top of them along the front of the cliff rose a path, or rather a ledge so narrow, that, here and there, it was necessary to hold on to projections from the cliff to get along it.
Ralph climbed the steps and made his way up it. Here and there an iron hasp had been driven into the surface of the cliff by which one prevented one’s self falling into space. And so he was able to reach, with considerable difficulty, the plateau above, to find that the path ran round the second lake and turned towards the passage between the two. A grassy plain, studded with boulders, stretched around him. Two shepherds were moving off it, driving their flocks towards the high wall. Nowhere did he see the tall figure of the Marquess de Talencay.
He returned to the beach after an hour’s exploration, to make the disagreeable discovery that, during that [[271]]hour, the water had risen and covered the bottom steps in the cliff. He had to jump to the beach.
“It’s queer,” he murmured with an anxious air.
Aurelie must have heard him, for she came quickly out of the cave to him. Then she stopped, astonished.