The next moment both were swept right into the gloomy cavernous place, to what was evidently certain death.

CHAPTER NINE.

THE HORRORS OF A SCHLUCHT.

Saxe stood now paralysed with horror, and it was not until Dale had shaken him twice that his fixed, wild manner began to pa.s.s off.

"Stop here," cried Dale: "you are too much unnerved to come."

"Where--where are you going?" cried the lad; and before an answer could be given, he cried: "Yes; yes, go on: I'm ready."

"I tell you that you are too much unnerved to venture!" cried Dale angrily. "Am I to lose you both?"

He turned and hurried out of sight; but he had not gone fifty yards along the narrow ledge into the gloomy crack before he heard a hoa.r.s.e sound, and turning sharply back, there was Saxe close behind.

"Don't send me back," cried the lad: "I can't stand here doing nothing.

I must come and help."

"Come, then!" shouted Dale, his voice sounding smothered and weak in the echoing rush of the waters, which glided in at the funnel-like opening smooth and gla.s.sy, now leaped forward and roared as they careered madly along, leaping up and licking at the rugged but smoothly polished walls, charging into cracks and crevices, and falling back broken up into foam, and ever forced onward at a tremendous rate by the ma.s.s of water behind.

The place itself would in bright sunshine have made the stoutest-hearted pause and draw breath before adventuring its pa.s.sage; but seen in the weird subdued light which came down filtered through the trees which overhung the chasm a thousand feet above, it seemed terrible. For only at intervals could a glimpse of the sky be seen, while as they penetrated farther, the walls, which almost exactly matched in curve, angle and depression, came nearer together, and the place darkened.

"Take care--take care!" Dale cried from time to time, as he found portions of the ledge narrower and more difficult; but Saxe did not speak, only crept on, with his left hand grasping every inequality of the rock, and, like his leader, glancing down into the mad race of foaming water, in the hope of catching sight of Melchior's upturned face and outstretched hands.

It never occurred to him that they could render no help, even if they did catch sight of their unfortunate companion; for they were never less than twenty feet above the narrow hissing and roaring stream, and there was not a spot where a rock could be grasped: everything was worn too smooth by the constant pa.s.sage of the water, which doubtless carried with it stones from the lake as well as those ever loosened by frost and crumbling down from above, to aid in grinding the walls quite smooth.

But there was the possibility of the unfortunate man being thrown into one of the vast pot-holes or cauldrons formed cavern-like in bends of the chasm, where as it rushed along past the zigzag of the broken rock the water glanced from one side, and shot almost at right angles across to the other, to whirl round and round, ever enlarging a great well-like hole, the centre of which looked like a funnel-like whirlpool, with the water s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g its way apparently into the bowels of the earth, and down whose watery throat great b.a.l.l.s of foam were constantly being sucked.

From time to time, as Dale rested for a few moments to peer into one of these, he raised his eyes to look back hopelessly at Saxe, who could only shake his head in his utter despair, knowing only too well that it was hopeless.

Then on and on again, with the horror of the terrible place seeming to crush them down, while to Saxe it was as if the waters were trying to leap at him to wash him from the narrow ledge and bear him away. And the farther they went on the more fearful the place seemed to grow. The walls dripped with moisture, as a result of the spray which rose from the hurrying race, and shut them in back and front with a gloomy mist, which struck cold and dank as it moistened their faces and seemed choking to breathe.

Again Dale paused, to peer down at one of the great whirling pools beneath the rock, which was being undermined in this place more than ever; and as Saxe clung by him and gazed down too, there was the perfectly round pool of water, with its central pipe, which, by the optical illusion caused by the gloom and mist, looked reversed--that is, as if the concavity were convex, and he were gazing at the eye of some subterranean monster, the effect being made more realistic by the rock overhanging it like a huge brow.

"Come on," cried Dale. But Saxe was fascinated, and did not hear his voice in the hollow, echoing, pipe-like roar.

"Come on, boy--quick!" he shouted again. But Saxe still bent down over the racing waters, to stare at that awful similitude of an eye, which moved strangely and bemused and fascinated him so that he looked as if he would be drawn down into it and be a victim to the awful place.

"Saxe! Saxe!" shouted Dale, seizing him by the arm; and the boy started and gazed at him wildly. "Can you see him!"

"No, no," cried the boy.

"What were you looking at!"

"That! that!" gasped Saxe.

"Ah! yes. Like some terrible eye. Come along. I can't think that anything would stay here. It would be swept along at a tremendous rate.

That water is going almost at the rate of a great fall. They must have been borne right through long ago."

"Think so?" Saxe tried to say. Certainly his lips moved; and roused now from the strange fascination, he crept on after his leader, their progress being very slow in spite of their anxiety, for all was new and strange, and the next step, for aught they knew, might plunge them down to a fall like their guide's.

Then the way was dangerously narrow at times, one dripping place forcing them to stoop--so heavily overhung the rock above.

At last, just in front of them, the gorge seemed to end, for the place was blocked by a wall that ran across the narrow rift at right angles, and against this the whole body of water was propelled, to strike straight upon it, and rise up like a billow of the sea and fall back with a furious roar. Here the foam formed so dense a mist that Dale had crept right into it before he realised that, as the water fell back, it shot away through the gloom to his left, forming a fresh billow against a perpendicular wall before it again darted onward.

"Has this awful place no end!" he said, as he grasped the meaning of this fresh disturbance of its course; and he peered forward again for the path, it being absolute madness to think of seeing anything in the watery chaos below. Then, looking back, it was as if some icy hand had clutched his heart, for he was alone.

For the moment he felt that Saxe must have slipped and fallen, and in the agony he suffered he fancied himself back again in England facing the boy's father and trying to plead some excuse for the want of care.

Saxe was entrusted to him for a few months' visit to the Alps--a visit to combine pleasure and instruction, as well as to gain more robust health.

As he thought this he was already on his way back to the sharp angle he had pa.s.sed round, and as he reached it his horror and despair became almost unbearable.

But this part of his suffering had its termination; and he fully grasped that, like as in a dream, all this had occupied but a few moments of time, for a hand was thrust round the stony angle and searched for a projection, and as Dale eagerly grasped the humid palm, Saxe glided round and then followed him into the corner, beneath which the water roared and churned itself into foam, pa.s.sed this in safety, and once more they crept on, thinking now only of getting out into the daylight and following the stream in the hope of finding poor Melchior's remains.

The same thoughts occurred to both of them: suppose the poor fellow was beyond their reach, swept right away into the depths of some lake miles away--what were they to do? Retrace their steps to the mouth of the gorge, where their provision was left, or try to find their way somehow over the mountains? It would be a fearful task, ignorant of their way, faint from want of food, weak from exhaustion. It was now for the first time that Saxe realised how terrible the mountains were, and how easily a person might be lost, or meet with a mishap that would mean laming, perhaps death.

Then their thoughts of self gave place again to those relating to their poor guide.

"We must find him!" Saxe cried involuntarily, and so loudly that Dale turned and looked back at him wildly, for the thoughts had been exactly his own.

"Yes," he said, his voice m.u.f.fled by the roar of the waters; "we must find him. The place is not so very large, after all. Wait till we get out: I can't talk here."

For the roar had seemed to increase and the darkness to grow deeper for the next few yards. The water, too, was nearer, the path having a steep incline downward, with the natural result that the ledge was dripping with moisture, and from time to time some wave would strike the opposite wall with a heavy slap, and the spray fly in quite a gust, as of rain, full in their faces.

"It can't be much farther," thought Saxe, as he went cautiously down the incline, to see that the rock on his right now bent right over, and had caused the darkness. Then the path bent to the left, struck off to the right again, and was now down within three or four feet of the water, after which there was a fresh corner to be turned, where the wave that rose up seemed somehow illuminated; but they were quite close up, with the water almost running over the path, before they fully grasped that the light came from the side, bringing with it some hope, even if it were little; and at the same time Saxe felt the possibility of going back the same way now that the full extent of the danger could be grasped.

"Poor Melchior!" he muttered--"it must have been impossible for him to have led the mule through here;" and as he thought, this, the full light of day came streaming in, making Dale, a few yards before him, stand out like a silhouette clearly cut in black, while for a hundred yards the water now ran, rapidly widening and growing less like a torrent, till right away he could see it flowing smoothly between the towering rocks that were piled-up on either side of its bed.

CHAPTER TEN.

BEING USED TO IT.

Dale hurried on, with Saxe close behind him, till they were out of the gloomy schlucht, and scrambling over the rocks by the rapidly widening stream, whose waters had now grown turbid, and were bearing great patches of grey froth upon their surface.

They could see for a couple of hundred yards down the narrow way along which the stream ran; then it bore off to the right and was hidden; and to command a better view, as they eagerly searched the surface for some trace of Melchior, they mounted the tumbled-together rocks, and saw that they were at the head of a widening valley, surrounded by nearly level mountains, forming an oval, which looked like the bed of an ancient lake similar to the one they had lately left. But, in place of deep water, there was a plain of thinly scattered gra.s.s growing amongst fragments of rock that looked as if they had been swept down from the mountains round, and serpentining through the level was the swift river, whose course they could trace till it pa.s.sed through a narrow gap at the far end.

Saxe climbed the higher, and balanced himself on the top of a rough block, which rocked slightly, like a Cornish logan, as he stood shading his eyes and following the course of the stream amongst the huge boulders which often hid it from view; while from his lower position Dale searched the windings nearer to them, hoping to see that which they sought stranded somewhere among the stones.

But they looked in vain.

"Can you see anything, Saxe?"

"No," replied the boy in a despondent tone: "can you, sir!"