第72章 CHAPTER XXI I CLIMB THE CRAGS A SECOND TIME(4)

I turned the corner a foot or two above the water, and stood on a slope of about fifty degrees, running from the parapet of stone to a line beyond which blue sky appeared. The first step I took the place began to move. A boulder crashed into the fall, and tore down into the abyss with a shattering thunder. I lay flat and clutched desperately at every hold, but I had loosened an avalanche of earth, and not till my feet were sprayed by the water did I get a grip of firm rock and check my descent. All this frightened me horribly, with the kind of despairing angry fear which I had suffered at Bruderstroom, when I dreamed that the treasure was lost. I could not bear the notion of death when I had won so far.

After that I advanced, not by steps, but by inches. I felt more poised and pinnacled in the void than when I had stood on the spike of rock, for I had a substantial hold neither for foot nor hand. It seemed weeks before I made any progress away from the lip of the waterhole. I dared not look down, but kept my eyes on the slope before me, searching for any patch of ground which promised stability. Once I found a scrog of juniper with firm roots, and this gave me a great lift. A little further, however, I lit on a bank of screes which slipped with me to the right, and I lost most of the ground the bush had gained me. My whole being, I remember, was filled with a devouring passion to be quit of this gully and all that was in it.

Then, not suddenly as in romances, but after hard striving and hope long deferred, I found myself on a firm outcrop of weathered stone. In three strides I was on the edge of the plateau. Then I began to run, and at the same time to lose the power of running. I cast one look behind me, and saw a deep cleft of darkness out of which I had climbed. Down in the cave it had seemed light enough, but in the clear sunshine of the top the gorge looked a very pit of shade. For the first and last time in my life I had vertigo. Fear of falling back, and a mad craze to do it, made me acutely sick. I managed to stumble a few steps forward on the mountain turf, and then flung myself on my face.

When I raised my head I was amazed to find it still early morning. The dew was yet on the grass, and the sun was not far up the sky. I had thought that my entry into the cave, my time in it, and my escape had taken many hours, whereas at the most they had occupied two. It was little more than dawn, such a dawn as walks only on the hilltops. Before me was the shallow vale with its bracken and sweet grass, and farther on the shining links of the stream, and the loch still grey in the shadow of the beleaguering hills. Here was a fresh, clean land, a land for homesteads and orchards and children. All of a sudden I realized that at last I had come out of savagery.

The burden of the past days slipped from my shoulders. I felt young again, and cheerful and brave. Behind me was the black night, and the horrid secrets of darkness. Before me was my own country, for that loch and that bracken might have been on a Scotch moor. The fresh scent of the air and the whole morning mystery put song into my blood. I remembered that I was not yet twenty.

My first care was to kneel there among the bracken and give thanks to my Maker, who in very truth had shown me 'His goodness in the land of the living.'

After a little I went back to the edge of the cliff. There where the road came out of the bush was the body of Henriques, lying sprawled on the sand, with two dismounted riders looking hard at it. I gave a great shout, for in the men I recognized Aitken and the schoolmaster Wardlaw.