Part 45 (1/2)

”Oh no! only a little shaken,” answered Winnie, with a little laugh that was half hysterical. ”I am strong enough to go on presently.”

”Nay, my child, you _must_ suffer yourself to be carried at this part,”

said Van der Kemp. ”Take her up, Nigel, you are stronger than I am _now_. I would not have asked you to do it before my accident!”

Our hero did not need a second bidding. Grasping Winnie in his strong arms he raised her as if she had been a feather, and strode away at a pace so rapid that he soon left Van der Kemp and Moses far behind.

”Put me down, now,” said Winnie, after a little while, in a low voice.

”I'm quite recovered now and can walk.”

”Nay, Winnie, you are mistaken. The path is very rough yet, and the dust gets deeper as we ascend. _Do_ give me the pleasure of helping you a little longer.”

Whatever Winnie may have felt or thought she said nothing, and Nigel, taking silence for consent, bore her swiftly onward and upward,--with an ”Excelsior” spirit that would have thrown the Alpine youth with the banner and the strange device considerably into the shade,--until he placed her at the yawning black mouth of the hermit's cave.

But what a change was there! The trees and flowering shrubs and ferns were all gone, lava, pumice, and ashes lay thick on everything around, and only a few blackened and twisted stumps of the larger trees remained to tell that an umbrageous forest had once flourished there.

The whole scene might be fittingly described in the two words--grey desolation.

”That is the entrance to your father's old home,” said Nigel, as he set his fair burden down and pointed to the entrance.

”What a dreadful place!” said Winnie, peering into the black depths of the cavern.

”It was not dreadful when I first saw it, Winnie, with rich verdure everywhere; and inside you will find it surprisingly comfortable. But we must not enter until your father arrives to do the honours of the place himself.”

They had not to wait long. First Moses arrived, and, shrewdly suspecting from the appearance of the young couple that they were engaged in conversation that would not brook interruption, or, perhaps, judging from what might be his own wishes in similar circ.u.mstances, he turned his back suddenly on them, and, stooping down, addressed himself to an imaginary creature of the animal kingdom.

”What a bootiful bufferfly you is, to be sure! up on sitch a place too, wid nuffin' to eat 'cept Krakatoa dust. I wonder what your moder would say if she know'd you was here. You should be ashamed ob yourself!”

”Hallo! Moses, what are you talking to over there?”

”Nuffin', Ma.s.sa Nadgel. I was on'y habin' a brief conv'sation wid a member ob de insect wurld in commemoration ob de purfesser. Leastwise, if it warn't a insect it must hab bin suffm' else. Won't you go in, Miss Winnie?”

”No, I'd rather wait for father,” returned the girl, looking a little flushed, for some strange and totally unfamiliar ideas had recently floated into her brain and caused some incomprehensible flutterings of the heart to which hitherto she had been a stranger.

Mindful of his father's injunctions, however, Nigel had been particularly careful to avoid increasing these flutterings.

In a few minutes the hermit came up. ”Ah! Winnie,” he said, ”there has been dire devastation here. Perhaps inside things may look better. Come, take my hand and don't be afraid. The floor is level and your eyes will soon get accustomed to the dim light.”

”I's afeared, ma.s.sa,” remarked Moses, as they entered the cavern, ”dat your sun-lights won't be wu'th much now.”

”You are right, lad. Go on before us and light the lamps if they are not broken.”

It was found, as they had expected, that, the only light which penetrated the cavern was that which entered by the cave's mouth, which of course was very feeble.

Presently, to Winnie's surprise, Moses was seen issuing from the kitchen with a petroleum lamp in one hand, the brilliant light of which not only glittered on his expressive black visage but sent a ruddy glare all over the cavern.

Van der Kemp seemed to watch his daughter intently as she gazed in a bewildered way around. There was a puzzled look as well as mere surprise in her pretty face.

”Father,” she said earnestly, ”you have spoken more than once of living as if in a dream. Perhaps you will wonder when I tell you that I experience something of that sort now. Strange though this place seems, I have an unaccountable feeling that it is not absolutely new to me--that I have seen it before.”