This silence was longer than the other; Christopher must have listened far.
“The world, sir.”
Beelo shook with a silent chuckle, and squeezed my hand; but I knew that Christopher’s words had a meaning.
“The world?” I quietly repeated.
“Yes, sir. I hear it.”
Beelo and I straightened up and set our ears on a strain.
“I hear nothing,” I said.
“I hear it, very faint,” Beelo breathlessly returned.
It made no difference with the steadiness of Christopher’s work. The odor gradually grew more pronounced, and then I recalled an iron smelter that I had seen in boyhood. Presently I too heard a distant roar as of a furnace that ground while it burned. Beelo crept close under my arm again. I could feel his quick heart-beats and shortened breathing against my side.
Creeping through these increasing sensations came the deep note of falling water. Why ask Beelo whether he had ever heard that our stream took a subterranean plunge? Christopher kept coolly at his task. The sharp striking and scraping of his tireless pole had long ago informed me that rock made our channel and shores, which were uneven and dangerous. Now and then the raft would make a sudden swing to avoid underwater rocks that Christopher’s soundings had discovered. At other times it would come to a lurching halt until the man carrying our lives in his hand had made sure of the way.