“I’ve a good mind to take Hannele too, to look after you,” returned Usk; but Helene smiled contentedly, in the certainty that Hannele could not possibly be accommodated in the buggy. In accordance with the cryptic direction at the end of the telegram, William and Jakob accompanied the carriage as a mounted escort, and Mr Hicks smiled when he met the procession, in spite of the seriousness of the occasion.
“Your outfit is real elegant, Lady Usk,” he said, as he helped Helene out. “Guess the natives will be ’most too frightened to stop and look at you.”
“Do they make any opposition to our exploring the place?” asked Usk.
“Not a cent, sir. I’ve been figuring around as cross-examiner all of the morning, and I can’t dig anything suspicious out of them. The whole township isn’t anything but rocks and a few goats, and there’s not a sign of plunder or bribery in any of the houses. Of course, they may all be in it together, and have hidden everything dangerous, but I can’t quite fix it so. And now, if her ladyship will be so good, after a few hints from me, as to work that camera all it’s worth, and make love to the women and the population generally, you and I will strike for the disappearing river.”
“Oh, mayn’t I come?” asked Helene anxiously.
Mr Hicks appeared to consider deeply. “Well, Lady Usk,” he said, “I’d as lief have you come as not, but you could assist us far more by exercising your fascinations upon the villagers. A few nickels laid out in bribing the children to have their pictures taken might raise us up friends that would justify their existence.”
“Then of course I will go to the village,” said Helene.
“Between you and me, sir,” said Mr Hicks, when he had explained the working of the camera, and Helene, attended by Jakob, had begun to climb the steep street of the hamlet, “I have no use for her ladyship the next hour or two. It’s a real ugly place, this cave, with a current that runs like Niagara, and a sweet reputation among the people. They won’t go near it for their lives, and would consider it profane to build a boat. I propose that you and I and your groom should take it in turns to explore, one man swimming, and the other two holding the rope and lighting him.”
Usk agreed, and the first sight of the cave proved to him that Mr Hicks’s precautions were not unnecessary. The river, running swift and dark, lost itself under an overhanging brow of rock, and it required a good deal of nerve to plunge into the blackness within, even when secured by a rope. Various ways of obtaining light were tried, such as burning candles at the entrance, fixing a lantern just inside it, or fastening a candle in the cap, miner’s fashion, and the cave was explored for some distance. Usk, indeed, ventured too far, being caught by the swift current, and only saved by clutching at a rock past which he was swept, until he had regained sufficient strength to add his own efforts to those of Mr Hicks and William as they hauled desperately at the rope. He returned silent and grave, for, as he confided to Mr Hicks, he felt he had been very near death. In the narrow passage he had reached, the torrent took a downward course, and above the rush of the current he believed he could distinguish the roar of water falling from a great height. What fate could be more awful than a plunge over a subterranean cataract, to be dashed and beaten and choked to death in the bowels of the earth? No attempt was made to penetrate farther, but there were some gruesome experiments to be conducted with the carcases of goats, in order to ascertain whether a body thrown into the river here could possibly reappear below Drinitza. The result, it may be mentioned, was of a negative character. Two of the carcases were actually found the next day in the river above Novigrad, but the rest were never seen again, so that the experiment proved little, either as to the body of the unfortunate Paschics or the still unknown fate of Count Mortimer.