"Now, silence! and listen!" said Gray.

They soon detected a curiously subdued clamor from the inner recesses

of the cleft. At first almost indistinguishable, it gradually assumed

the peculiar attribute of immense volumes of distant sound, and filled

the ear to the exclusion of all else. It was like nothing any of them

had heard before; now it recalled the roar of a mighty waterfall, and

again its strange melody brought memories of a river in flood. But the

dominant note was the grinding noise of innumerable mill-stones. It

cowed them all. Even the dog was afraid.

"Guess we tied up just in time," exclaimed Gray, feeling the need of

speech. A little sob answered him. Elsie was beginning to admit the

sheer hopelessness of her undertaking.

"Now, cheer up, Miss Maxwell," said he. "All the water that is going

in must come out by the same road. At the worst, we can skate back the

way we came and take our chance. But it will soon be broad daylight,

and I'll answer for it that if Captain Courtenay is yet alive he is not

between us and the mouth of the inlet, or he would have contrived some

sort of racket to let us know his whereabouts. Now, I propose that our

friend in the bows be asked to shin up the cliff and prospect a bit.

He ought to know how to crawl through this undergrowth. Fifty feet

higher he will be able to see some distance."

Elsie agreed miserably. She was crushed by the immensity of the

difficulties confronting them. Expedients which looked simple

beforehand were found lamentably deficient to cope with wild nature on

the stupendous scale of this gloomy land. Suarez, too, was very

reluctant to leave the boat, but the American adopted a short cut in

the argument, offering him the alternative of climbing ashore or of

being thrown overboard.

So the Argentine adopted the less hazardous method, and climbed to the

bank. A splash, and a scramble, and a slight exclamation from Elsie

told that the dog had followed. Soon the swish of leaves and the

crackling of rotten wood ceased. Suarez might be out of earshot or

merely hiding for a time, intending to return with news of an

impassable precipice. There was a crumb of comfort in the absence of

the terrier. Joey would either go on or come back to them at once.

Gray felt that the girl was too heart-broken to talk. He listened to

the rhythmical chorus of that witches' cauldron in the heart of the

defile, and watched the gray light slowly etching a path through the

trees, until it touched the fast-running water with a shimmer of silver.

Neither of them knew how long they remained there; at last, a straining

and creaking of the boat warned them that the water level was rising

and the ropes needed readjusting. It was now possible to see that

Elsie had made fast to a fallen tree; its branches were locked among

the gnarled roots of the lowermost growth above high-water mark.

Already there was a distinct lessening in the pace of the current, and

Gray fancied that the distant rumble was softer. It would not be many

minutes before the neighboring rocks were covered; high tide, he knew,

was at 3.15 A.M. He forebore to look at his watch, lest the girl

should note his action. That would imply the utter abandonment of hope.




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