Chafing with impatience as he was, Ludovic tried to dissuade him. “You can do nothing till the storm passes, except to get a wet skin, my dear Captain.”
Ompertz’s only argument was to wrap his cloak tightly round him and start off on his forlorn hope.
The accident seemed to have strengthened rather than damped Ruperta’s spirit; it was as though nothing could matter now. So they talked almost cheerfully, as the wind shrieked round them and the rain lashed the panes.
Minna was resigned now to her fate; she could laugh with the recklessness of despair; all hope in her was shattered with the wheel. Happily, the storm seemed inclined to abate something of its fury; the rain beat less savagely; the intervals of comparative light lasted longer. It was but a short half-hour from Ompertz’s departure, when his voice hailing them sent a thrill of expectation to their hearts. In an instant Ludovic was outside. Ompertz clambered breathless down the steep wall of rock.
“There is a great Schloss not a quarter of an hour from here,” he cried. “We are in luck! There will at least be shelter and food, perhaps a carriage. Come! The weather is abating. I will show you the place. Man, you cannot leave the ladies, and one a Princess, out here all night, and such a night, with a fine house but a few minutes away,” he protested, as he saw Ludovic hesitate.
A short consultation brought them to the conclusion that something must be risked. In that wild, desolate place they were not likely to be recognized, while shelter and rest were urgent, since their progress was stopped. Wrapping the Princess and Minna in their cloaks, the two men helped them up the craggy side of the ravine where they could strike across to the Schloss.
To bring the horses up was a more formidable business, but Ompertz, whose experience had fitted him for coping with most practical difficulties, accomplished this without mishap, and the party pushed forward through the storm. The way was difficult enough; amid rocks and pit-falls, they had in the darkness to proceed with the greatest care. After nearly an hour’s walking, they entered a valley running through a vast pine forest which rose and stretched away on either hand, a weird expanse of impenetrable blackness. At the top of a slight ascent Ompertz cried, “Look!”
They could see, a short way before them, a light shining out of the intense darkness, as through a hole in a black curtain, and when they had gone a few steps further along the now descending road, the passing away of a dark cloud brought dimly out against the sky the turrets of the castle.
CHAPTER XVIII
STRANGE QUARTERS
THE approach to the castle was by a series of terraces connected by a narrow zig-zag road. It stood on a small plateau formed in the wooded hill which rose with almost perpendicular abruptness behind it. Its aspect was curious enough, but the most astounding thing about it was its position, its unexpectedness, and the contrast with its wild surroundings.