“What do you think of that water falling, Christopher?” I asked.
He waited a long time, and his slow answer chilled me:
“I don’t know, sir.”
“You’ll go slow when we come nearer?”
“Yes, sir.”
Beelo gave me a hand-pressure intended to silence my foolish tongue.
With a growing intensity in the odor, in the furnace roar, and in the rumbling of the waterfall, came stealing something new and surpassingly uncanny. It was a very dim glow, with no visible source, and without the power to make anything seen but itself. Apparently it was but the darkness in a more oppressive phase. In vain did I strain my eyes to see Christopher, Beelo, the raft, the water,—anything that light could make visible; but the glow was as impenetrable as the darkness.
Beelo was going to pieces under the weight of this encompassing awe. I knew that his weakness was born of his yielding to an extraneous reliance—Christopher and me. He put his lips to my ear and whispered:
“I’m afraid.”
“Steady, lad. You are our guide; you are responsible for us.”