CHAPTER XII
TRAPPED ON THE LEDGE
Consciousness won back to Allan Stern--how long afterward hecould not tell--under the guise of a vast roaring tumult, a deafeningthunder that rose, fell, leaped aloft again in huge, titanic cadencesof sound.
And coupled with this glimmering sense-impression, he felt the driveof water over him; he saw, vaguely as in the memory of a dream, a dimgray light that weakly filtered through the gloom.
Weak, sick, dazed, the man realized that he still lived; and to hismind the thought "Beatrice!" flashed back again.
With a tremendous effort, gasping and shaken, weak, unnerved andwounded, he managed to raise himself upon one elbow and to peer abouthim with wild eyes.
A strange scene that. Even in the half light, with all his sensesdistorted by confusion and by pain, he made shift to comprehend alittle of what he saw.
He understood that, by some fluke of fate, life still remained in him;that, in some way he never could discover, he had been cast upon aledge of rock there in the cataract--a ledge over which spray and foamhurled, seething, yet a ledge which, parting the gigantic flood,offered a chance of temporary safety.
Above him, sweeping in a vast smooth torrent of clear green, he sawthe steady downpour of the falls. Out at either side, as he lay therestill unable to rise, he caught glimpses through the spume-drive,glimpses of swift white water, that broke and creamed as it whirledpast; that jetted high; that, hissing, swept away, away, to unknowndepths below that narrow, slippery ledge.
Realization of all this had hardly forced itself upon his dazedperceptions when a stronger recrudescence of his thought about thegirl surged back upon him.
"Beatrice! Beatrice!" he gasped, and struggled up.
On hands and knees, groping, half-blinded, deafened, he began tocrawl; and as he crawled, he shouted the girl's name, but thethundering of the vast tourbillions and eddies that swirled about therock, white and ravening, drowned his voice. Vague yet terrible, inthe light of the dim moon that filtered through the mists, the racingflood howled past. And in Stern's heart, as he now came to more andbetter understanding, a vast despair took shape, a sickening fearsurged up.
Again he shouted, chokingly, creeping along the slippery ledge.Through the driving mists he peered with agonized eyes. Where was theyawl now? Where the girl? Down there in that insane welter of the madtorrent--swept away long since to annihilation? The thought maddenedhim.
Clutching a projection of the rock, he hauled himself up to his feet,and for a moment stood there, swaying, a strange, tattered, drippingfigure in the dim moonlight, wounded, breathless and disheveled, withbloodshot eyes that sought to pierce the hissing spray.
All at once he gulped some unintelligible thing and staggered forward.
There, wedged in a crevice, he had caught sight of something--what itwas he could not tell, but toward it now he stumbled.
He reached the thing. Sobbing with realization of his incalculableloss and of the wreckage of all their hopes and plans and all thatlife had meant, he fell upon his knees beside the object.
He groped about it as though blind; he felt that formless mass ofdebris, a few shattered planks and part of the woven sail, now jammedinto the fissure in the ledge. And at touch of all that remained tohim, he crouched there, ghastly pale and racked with unspeakableanguish.
But hope and the indomitable spirit of the human heart still urged himon. The further end of the ledge, overdashed with wild jets of sprayand stinging drives of brine, still remained unexplored. And towardthis now he crept, bit by bit, fighting his way along, now clinging assome more savage surge leaped over, now battling forward on hands andknees along the perilous strip of stone.
One false move, he knew, one slip and all was over. He, too, like theyawl itself, and perhaps like Beatrice, would whirl and fling awaydown, down, into the nameless nothingness of that abyss.
Better thus, he dimly realized, better, after all, than to cling tothe ledge in case he could not find her. For it must be only a matterof time, and no very long time at that, when exhaustion and starvationwould weaken him and when he must inevitably be swept away.
And in his mind he knew the future, which voiced itself in ahalf-spoken groan:
"If she's not there, or if she's there, but dead--good-by!"
Even as he sensed the truth he found her. Sheltered behind a juttingspur of granite, Beatrice was lying, where the shock of the impact hadthrown her when the yawl had struck the ledge.
Drenched and draggled in her water-soaked tiger-skin, her long hairtangled and disheveled over the rock, she lay as though asleep.
"_Dead!_" gasped Allan, and caught her in his arms, all limp and cold.Back from her brow he flung the brine-soaked hair; he kissed herforehead and her lips, and with trembling hands began to chafe herface, her throat, her arms.
To her breast he laid his ear, listening for some flicker of life,some promise of vitality again.
And as he sensed a slight yet rhythmic pulsing there--as he detected afaint breath, so vast a gratitude and love engulfed him that for amoment all grew dazed and shaken and unreal.
He had to brace himself, to struggle for self-mastery.
"Beta! Beta!" he cried. "Oh, my God! You live--you live!"
Dripping water, unconscious, lithe, she lay within his clasp, nowstrong again. Forgotten his weakness and his pain, his bruises, hiswounds, his fears All had vanished from his consciousness with the onesupreme realization--"_She lives!_"
Back along the ledge he bore her, not slipping now, not crouching, buterect and bold and powerful, nerved to that effort and that daring bythe urge of the great love that flamed through all his veins.
Back he bore her to the comparative safety of the other end, whereonly an occasional breaker creamed across the rock and where, behind anarrow shelf that projected diagonally upward and outward, he laid hisprecious burden down.
And now again he called her name; he rubbed and chafed her.
Only joy filled his soul. Nothing else mattered now. The total loss oftheir yawl and all its precious contents, the wreck of theirexpedition almost at its very start, the fact that Beatrice and hewere now alone upon a narrow ledge of granite in the midst of astupendous cataract that drained the ocean down to unknown,unthinkable depths, the knowledge that she and he now were withoutarms, ammunition, food, shelter, fire, anything at all, defenseless ina wilderness such as no humans ever yet had faced--all this meantnothing to Allan Stern.
For he had _her_; and as at last her lids twitched, then opened, andher dazed eyes looked at him; as she tried to struggle up while herestrained her; as she chokingly called his name and stretched atremulous hand to him, there in the thunderous half light of thefalls, he knew he could not ask for greater joy, though all ofcivilization and of power might be his, without her.
In his own soul he knew he would choose this abandonment and all thisdesperate peril with Beatrice, rather than safety, comfort, luxury,and the whole world as it once had been apart from her.
Yet, as sometimes happens in the supreme crises of life, his firstspoken word was commonplace enough.
"There, there, lie still!" he commanded, drawing her close to hisbreast. "You're all right, now--just keep quiet, Beatrice!"
"What--what's happened--" she gasped. "_Where_--"
"Just a little accident, that's all," he soothed the frightened girl.Dazed by the roaring cadence of the torrent, she shuddered and hid herface against him; and his arms protected her as he crouched therebeside her in the scant shelter of the rocky shelf.
"We got carried over a waterfall, or something of that sort," headded. "We're on a ledge in the river, or whatever it is, and--"
"You're hurt, Allan?"
"No, no--are _you?_"
"It's nothing, boy!" She looked up again, and even in the dim light hesaw her try to smile. "Nothing matters so long as we have each other!"
Silence between them for a moment, while he drew her close and kissedher. He questioned her again, but found tha
t save for bruises and acruel blow on the temple, she had taken no hurt in the plunge that hadstunned her. Both, they must have been flung from the yawl when it hadgone to pieces. How long they had lain upon the rock they knew not.All they could know was that the light woodwork of the boat had beendashed away with their supplies and that now they again faced theworld empty-handed--provided even that escape were possible from themidst of that mad torrent.
An hour or so they huddled in the shelter of the rocky shelf tillstrength and some degree of calm returned and till the growing lightfar off to eastward through the haze and mist told them that day wasdawning again.
Then Allan set to work exploring once more carefully their littleislet in the swirling flood.
"You stay here, Beta," said he. "So long as you keep back of thisprojection you're safe. I'm going to see just what the prospect is."
"Oh, be careful, Allan!" she entreated. "Be so very, very careful,won't you?"
He promised and left her. Then, cautiously, step by step, he made hisway along the ledge in the other direction from that where he hadfound the senseless girl.
To the very end of the ledge he penetrated, but found no hope. Nothingwas to be seen through the mists save the mad foam-rush of the watersthat leaped and bounded like white-maned horses in a race of death.Bold as the man was, he dared not look for long. Dizziness threatenedto overwhelm him with sickening lure, its invitation to the plunge.So, realizing that nothing was to be gained by staying there, he drewback and once more sought Beatrice.
"Any way out?" she asked him, anxiously, her voice sounding clear andpure through the tumult of the rushing waters.
He shook his head, despairingly. And silence fell again, and each satthinking long, long thoughts, and dawn came creeping grayly throughthe spume-drive of the giant falls.
More than an hour must have passed before Stern noted a strangephenomenon--an hour in which they had said few words--an hour in whichboth had abandoned hopes of life--and in which, she in her own way, hein his, they had reconciled themselves to the inevitable.
But at last, "What's that?" exclaimed the man; for now a differenttone resounded in the cataract, a louder, angrier note, as though theplunge of waters at the bottom had in some strange, mysterious waydrawn nearer. "What's that?" he asked again.
Below there somewhere by the tenebrous light of morning he couldsee--or thought that he could see--a green, dim, vaguely tossing driveof waters that now vanished in the whirling mists, now showed againand now again grew hidden.
Out to the edge of the rocky shelf he crept once more. Yes, for acertainty, now he could make out the seething plunge of the waters asthey roared into the foam-lashed flood below.
But how could this be? Stern's wonder sought to grasp analysis of thestrange phenomenon.
"If it's true that the water at the bottom's rising," thought he,"then there must either be some kind of tide in that body of water orelse the cavity itself must be filling up. In either case, what if theprocess continues?"
And instantly a new fear smote him--a fear wherein lay buried like afly in amber a hope for life, the only hope that had yet come to himsince his awakening there in that trap sealed round by sluicingmaelstroms.
He watched a few moments longer, then with a fresh resolve, desperateyet joyful in its strength, once more sought the girl.
"Beta," said he, "how brave are you?"
"How brave? Why, dear?"
He paused a moment, then replied: "Because, if what I believe is true,in a few minutes you and I have got to make a fight for life--a harderfight than any we've made yet--a fight that may last for hours andmay, after all, end only in death. A battle royal! Are you strong forit? Are you brave?"
"Try me!" she answered, and their eyes met, and he knew the truth,that come what might of life or death, of loss or gain, defeat orvictory, this woman was to be his mate and equal to the end.
"Listen, then!" he commanded. "This is our last, our only chance. Andif it fails--"
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