‘You cannot. You must not. The coppice and brambles would tear your clothes and hands and face. The scramble is difficult by day and dangerous by night. You must remain here by your father. Trust me. I will do all in my power for poor Eve. We cannot bring her up the way we descend. We must force our way laterally into a path. You remain by your father, and let a man run for another or two more lanterns.’
Then Jasper went down by way of the wood with the men scrambling, falling, bursting through the brakes; some cursing when slashed across the face by an oak bough or torn through cloth and skin by a braid of bramble. They were quite invisible to Barbara, and to each other. They went downward: fast they could not go, fearing at every moment to fall over a face of rock; groping, struggling as with snakes, in the coils of wood; slipping, falling, scrambling to their feet again, calling each other, becoming bewildered, losing their direction. The lantern that Watt held was quite invisible to them, buried above their heads in the densest undergrowth. The only man of them who came unhurt out of the coppice was Joseph, who, fearing for his face and hands and uniform, unwilling that he should appear lacerated and disfigured before Jane, instead of finding his way down through the brush, descended leisurely by the path or road that made a long circuit to the water’s edge, and then ascended by the same road again to the place whence he had started.
Jasper, who had more intelligence than the rest, had taken his bearings, before starting, by the red star on the side of Hingston Hill, that shone out of a miner’s hut window. This he was able always to see, and by it to steer his course; so that eventually he reached the spot where was Watt with the lantern.
‘Where is she? What are you doing?’ he asked breathlessly. His hands were torn and bleeding, his face bruised.
‘Oh, I do not know. I left her. I want to find Martin—he cannot be far off.’
The boy was scrambling on a slope of fallen rubble.
‘I insist, Watt: tell me. Give me the lantern at once.’
‘I will not. She is up there. You can make out the ledge against the sky, and by the light of the fire above; but Martin—whither is he gone?’
Then away farther down went the boy with his lantern. Instead of following him, Jasper climbed up the rubble slope to the ledge. His eyes had become accustomed to the dark. He distinguished the fluttering end of a white or light-coloured dress. Then he swung himself up upon the ledge, and saw, by the faint light that still lingered in the sky, the figure of a woman—of Eve—lying on one side, with the hands clinging to a broken branch of ivy. A thick bed of heather was on this ledge—so thick that it had prevented Eve from rolling off it when she had fallen into the bush.
He stooped over her. He felt her heart, he put his ear to her mouth. Immediately he called up to Barbara, ‘She is alive, but insensible.’