Part 27 (1/2)
”I--Iit,” she stammered, ”but I believe--oh, please, Mr Holman, try and walk in the direction I pointed in!”
”I certainly will try,” said the youngster ”If I go wrong, you putto find a way out I don't know the right path to it, but I've got a preain”
We ination furrowed the floor of that place with bottoripped our hearts It required a mental effort to irls stuony to Holrip of the rope and braced ourselves against the happening which our excitedhand in hand with dread--a dread that becaht drag to death the tomen that we loved
On, and on, and on, we bored into the horrible night With blind footsteps alked fearfully through the Stygian waves that rolled around us The place seemed to be of enormous size, and in the dead silence that surrounded us our footsteps woke clattering echoes that appeared to mock our efforts to escape
The air in places had a strange odour that reminded us of camphor This peculiar sh which we passed, and whenever our passage through these scented layers was unduly prolonged, we experienced a sensation that I can only liken to the near approach of seasickness It irls sick and faint, but they walked on without co
We struck the wall of the place after we had been walking for a period that we judged to be about three hours, and we decided to rest for a while We sat close together upon the cold floor and endeavoured to cheer each other's spirits by constantly asserting that the air of the place made it reasonable to suppose that there h which Leith had lowered the three, and the fissure through which Holantic ash pile And the assertions seeical The two entrances that we knew of opened into Leith's retreat, and it was hard to think that the air supply of the enorh those two openings We coument as we ate athat he who has the biggest stock of hope has the biggest grip upon life, we endeavoured to ain after a short rest
But that iht produced a depression that we could not shake off I ahead of the ht with the nightuished We couldn't speak while therapidly coloured with scenes depicting our end in the darkness and the silence, where a grim fate would even deny one a last look at a dearly loved face A silence came upon us that had the same effect as intense cold Each in his own frozen husk of despair plodded forith the idea that the others were so engrossed in their own thoughts that they were not inclined to anshen addressed The darkness so completely isolated each person that after sohly convince thepeople and not with phantoms
It was after one of these intervals of silence that Barbara Herndon made a discovery that chilled our blood She made some commonplace remark to her sister and received no reply She repeated the observation, but it brought no co the rest of us froe torpor, and we stopped We sensed that Barbara Herndon was feeling her way toward her sister, and presently the younger girl gave a shriek of alarm that stirred a million echoes in that place of terror
”Edith!” she shrieked ”Edith! Edith! Where are you?”
Hol toward each other in an effort to find a quick solution for the mystery We collided violently as we reached the spot where the rope had circled Edith Herndon's waist, and we stood, stunned and speechless, as we fingered the cord In some manner, probably severed by a knifelike projection of rock, the loop which I had knotted around her body had been cut through, and the rope had fallen unnoticed froirl!
”Great God!” I cried ”Where did we lose her? What way did we co influence of the place had made us walk for an hour or so in complete silence, and it was impossible to say when she had lost her position in the line And now, as weto peer into the blackness, we lost all sense of direction Each had a different notion about the e had co forward, our coht ahead o in an opposite direction, but in the fewfor the loop where Edith had been tied, we became bewildered We didn't knohich direction to turn in searching for the lost one!
”What'll we do?” cried the Professor ”Do soreat breath and yelled her nah the place like the noise ain I screamed it, and the million devils in the place shrieked the name in mockery I exhausted myself in ripped my ared ht she heard an answer,” he cried ”Listen! There it is again!”
It was Edith! Her voice caht of the bottoed blindly toward the spot froes before we ripped her hands, and the Professor and Barbara, hysterical with joy, sobbed their thanks into the gloom
”I don't kno the rope became undone,” cried Edith ”I didn't find out that I had become separated from the rest of you till I attempted to draw your attention to the waterfall”
”To the what?” I questioned
”To the waterfall,” repeated the girl ”Did you pass it? It is a beautiful little waterfall, and the water flows over a white limestone rock that makes it sparkle like so many fireflies in the dark”
I cannot explain what happened to me at that moment Some veil within irl had uttered I was back upon Levuka wharf, lying under the copra bag where Holman had found me, and for aa score of half-forgotten incidents into my conscious area
_”It is the White Waterfall!”_ I yelled ”It is the White Waterfall that the Maori sang of on the wharf at Levuka! He arning Toni, and Toni was killed by Soma because he knew! It is the way out! We're saved!
We're saved! It is on the road to heaven out of Black Fernando's hell!”
[Illustration]