“No.”
Blanche’s reply came mechanically. She was struggling with the fear that possessed her. Then her courage seemed to return. She drew a deep breath, and relinquished the girl to the man’s support while she sat back on her heels.
“She’s badly crashed, anyway,” she said. “She’s been thrown or fallen from her pony. But—why here? Why at the edge of the water? What was she doing here, anyway? My!”
She watched Jim’s movements. He was gently stroking the broad white forehead, removing the loose hair which had fallen over it. He laid his finger-tips upon the girl’s temples. Then, very carefully, he endeavoured to raise an eyelid. After that he laid her gently back on the ground.
The next moment he was on his feet, and Blanche too, stood up. He stared about him at the dark scene which the sun was endeavouring to lighten. And for awhile he remained lost in thought.
He was gazing up at the western hillside, where the mouth of a great cavern yawned, and out of which a shallow stream cascaded down over a tatter of rocks to the lagoon below. It was the same on three sides. Towering hills surrounded a narrow amphitheatre, that was darkly forbidding by reason of the immensity of height that crowded it, and the pine woods which edged the lagoon. The waters reflected the gloomy scene, and the sun, slanting its blaze of light, transformed the clear depths into a mirror of dancing light.
The place appeared to be a sort of dead end. To any who knew nothing of the tunnel exit it literally was a dead end. There was no apparent outlet other than that which the flowing waters had made for themselves down the gorge. For the rest, a barrier stood up, shutting it off from the mountain heart beyond.
There were three streams, which, pouring down the hillsides, fed the lagoon, and subsequently the creek. There was one to the north, one coming down the southern hillside, and that which tumbled headlong out of the mouth of the cavern set so far up on the face of the western hills.
The whole place seemed to be a barrier designed by Nature in her most secret mood—a barrier which was the whole salvation of those who lived in the world of hills beyond it. But the passage was there. It was there through the yawning mouth of the cavern. And it was approached by a long inclined path set on a narrow ledge, which rose diagonally from the foot of the southern hill and made its devious way across its precipitous face.
At last Jim turned from his contemplation of the splashing water pouring from the cavern mouth. He glanced across at the three horses tethered at the edge of the surrounding forest. Blanche urged him.