Had Mr Sudberry known the depth of the tremendous gulf into which he was peering, and the steep cliff on the edge of which he stood, he would have sprung back in alarm. But he did not know—he did not entertain the faintest idea of the truth so he boldly, though cautiously, began to clamber down, assisting Lucy to descend.
Man, (including woman), knows not what he can accomplish until he tries. Millions of glittering gold would not have induced any member of that party to descend such a place in the dark, had they known what it was—yet they accomplished it in safety. Down, down they went!
“Dear me, when shall we reach the foot? We must be near it now.”
No, they were not near it; still down they went, becoming more and more alarmed, yet always tempted on by the feeling that each step would bring them to the bottom.
“What a noise the stream makes! why, it must be a river!”
No, it was not a river—it was a mere burn; quite a little burn, but—what then? Little men are always fussier and noisier than big men; little boys invariably howl more furiously than big boys. Nature is full of analogies; and little streams, especially mountain streams, always make more ado in finding their level than big rivers.
They got down at last, and then they found the stream rushing, bursting, crashing among rent and riven rocks and boulders as if it had gone furiously mad, and was resolved never more to flow and murmur, but always to leap and roar. It was impassable; to walk down its banks or bed was impossible, so the wanderers had to re-ascend the bank, and roam away over black space in search of another crossing. They soon lost the sound in the intricacies of cliffs and dells, and never again found that stream. But they found a narrow path, and Fred announced the discovery with a cheer. It was an extremely rugged path, and appeared to have been macadamised with stones the size of a man’s head. This led them to suspect that it must be a ditch, not a path; but it turned out to be the dry bed of a mountain-torrent—dry, at least, as regards running water, though not dry in respect of numerous stagnant pools, into which at various times each member of the party stepped unintentionally. It mattered not—nothing could make them wetter or more miserable than they were—so they thought. They had yet to learn that the thoughts of men are forever misleading them, and that there is nothing more certain than the uncertainty of all human calculations.