Prisoners of Chance

"True, friend," I admitted as he paused for breath, amused to behold a man thus played upon. "If it is a comfort to you, we all confess it was your voice which put an end to the dancing. Yet if there is a time for prayer, so there is time also for action, and the latter must be here now. Whatever adventure awaits us before nightfall, we shall meet it no less bravely if we first have food. So let us break our fast, and depart from this accursed spot."

It was not a cheerful meal, our nerves being still at high tension, and we partook more from duty than any feeling of enjoyment. I must except the old Puritan, however, who would have eaten, I believe, had that same figure been dancing at his elbow. Many anxious looks were cast upward at the rock crest, every unwonted sound causing us to start and glance about in nervous terror. It seems to me now Eloise remained the most self-controlled among us, and I have felt sincerely ashamed at yielding to my weaker nature in thus betraying nervousness before that company. Yet had she been in safety I would have proven more of a man, as by this time no haunting superstition remained to burden my heart. I realized we were leaguered by flesh and blood, not by demons of the air, and had never counted my life specially valuable in Indian campaign. But to be compelled to look into her fair face, to feel constantly the trustful gaze of her brown eyes, knowing well what would be her certain fate should she fall into savage hands, operated in breaking down all the manliness within me, leaving me like a helpless child, ready to start at the slightest sound. De Noyan barely touched the food placed in front of him, and, long before Cairnes had completed his meal, the Chevalier was restlessly pacing the rocks beside the stream, casting impatient glances in our direction.

"Mon Dieu!" he ejaculated at last, "it is not the nature of a Frenchman to remain longer cooped in such a hole. I beg you, Benteen, bid that gluttonous English animal cease stuffing himself like an anaconda, and let us get away; each moment I am compelled to bide here is torture."

Experiencing the same tension, I persuaded the Puritan to suspend his onslaught, and, undisturbed by sight or sound, we began a slow advance, clambering across the bowlders strewing the narrow way, discovering as we moved forward that those towering cliffs on either side were becoming lower, although no possibility of scaling them became apparent. We travelled thus upwards of a quarter of a mile, our progress being necessarily slow, when a dull roar stole gradually upon our hearing. A moment later, rounding a sharp edge of projecting rock, and picking our way cautiously along a narrow slab of stone extending out above the swirling water, we came forth in full view of a vast cliff, with unbroken front extending from wall to wall across the gorge, while over it plunged the stream in a magnificent leap of fully one hundred and fifty feet. It was a scene of rare, romantic beauty, the boiling stream surging and dancing madly away from its foot, and the multicolored mists rising up like a gauzy veil between us and the column of greenish-blue water. Yet it pleased us little then, for it barred our progress northward as completely as would a hostile army.