Fire Island Part 25

And now the idea came to him that it was impossible that the chasm could have been there when he ascended, but had opened during the fresh eruption in which he had so nearly been overwhelmed.

At last, when his sufferings from the heat were growing unbearable, and his head swam with the giddy sensation which supervened, the rift appeared to close in about fifty yards further on. He sheltered his swimming eyes, and endeavoured to steady himself, as, with sinking heart, he tried to make out whether this really were so, or only fancy.

But it seemed to be fact, and, pressing cautiously on, he lessened the distance, and then stopped appalled, shrinkingly facing a way of escape to the lower part of the mountain, but one terrible enough to make the stoutest-hearted shiver. For the chasm came to a sudden end, and recommenced two or three yards farther on, leaving a jagged, narrow strip of lava extending bridge-like from side to side.

"I dare not," he muttered, as he approached slowly, noting the shape, and trying to make out how far down the ma.s.s of rock extended, so as to see whether it would prove firm, or only be a crust which might give way beneath his weight, and then--He shuddered, for he knew that whoever ventured upon that narrow pathway did so facing a terrible death.

He looked wildly forward to see if the gap still went on to any distance, and he could trace it till it was lost in a hot haze.

"I must do it," muttered Lane, for he felt that if he kept on longer upon the upper edge, he must soon sink and perish from heat and exhaustion.

Knowing that if he stopped to think, he would grow less and less disposed to venture, and taking one long eager look at the green trees far below in the distance where there would be shelter and refreshing water, he gathered himself together, and walked slowly and steadily over the yielding ash and cinders to the beginning of the bridge.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

THE DESCENT.

Hope came with the first step, for it was upon hard slippery rock, and gathering courage from this, the young naturalist kept one foot firm, and stamped with the other to try whether the rock was brittle and likely to give way.

But it seemed firm, and fixing his eyes upon the other side, Oliver drew himself up erect and walked boldly on to the narrow bridge, profoundly conscious of the fact that there, on either side where he dare not look, the walls went down almost perpendicularly into a gulf too awful to ponder on, even for a moment.

Onward slowly, step by step, with the glistening crisp bridge some yards wide where he started, but as he went on, it grew narrower and narrower, while the farther side of the gulf which had appeared so short a distance away when he was high up and looking down, now looked far-off to his swimming eyes.

The giddy feeling increased as he neared the middle, and then he stopped short, and dropped upon his knees. For suddenly, with the profound gulf on either side, there came a loud resonant crack, and a piece of the lava split away and fell.

Lane knew that he ought to have rushed onward now, literally bounding across, but the horror of his position, as he felt that the frail bridge was giving way beneath his feet unnerved him, and he could not stir, but knelt there seeing the rock before him seem to rise and fall while he listened for what seemed as if it would never come, the echoing roar when the ma.s.s which had fallen struck below. Even if the lava on which he knelt had followed, he would not have stirred, only knelt there gazing at the remainder of the bridge in front as it undulated, rising and falling slowly, while the fume which arose from the chasm added to the giddy swimming in his head.

At last! A deafening, reverberating roar, and Lane clutched at a piece of the rock, and closed his eyes, feeling that all was over, but opened them again directly to see that the bridge before him was not undulating, and he knew that it was an optical illusion due to the heat and the giddiness from which he was suffering.

Nerving himself once more, he rose cautiously, and holding his gun across him with both hands, as if it were a balancing pole, he stepped cautiously forward a dozen steps or so, feeling the brittle, gla.s.sy rock quiver beneath his weight; and then with the lower side, and safety, not a dozen yards away, he was unable to contain himself, and springing forward he nearly ran, ending by making one great bound and landing safely as the whole ma.s.s over which he had pa.s.sed gave one crashing sound and fell.

Oliver Lane dropped on his knees a few yards from the edge he had left behind, and gazed wildly at the broad opening till a terrific roar arose from the depths below.

For some moments his senses must have left him, and he was hardly himself when he rose to his feet and reeled and staggered downward. But this pa.s.sed away; his consciousness fully returned, and no longer acting upon the blind instinct which urged him to escape, he began to hurry on more steadily toward where, far below, he could see the green trees, and as his dry lips parted he, in imagination, saw clear, cool water waiting to quench his awful thirst.

But during the next two hours his progress grew more and more mechanical, and there were times when he went on down and down the loose slope like one in a dream. There, though far below, was the object which guided him, a glistening thread of silver water from which the sun's rays flashed, and down by which he fell at last to bathe his face in its cool depths and drink as he had never drunk before.

It was as if he had imbibed new life when he finally drew away from the water and lay gazing up at the mountain slope, and the summit whose highest parts were hidden in the rounded cloud of smoke and steam which rested there. Danger was apparently absent, and Oliver Lane felt ready to imagine he had exaggerated everything, and been ready to take alarm without sufficient cause. He was ready now, in the pleasant restful feeling which came over him, to laugh at what he mentally called his cowardice. But this pa.s.sed off in time, and he knew that he had not only been in grave peril, but that even now his position was far from free of danger, it would soon be night again, he was without food, and that line of mist was like an impa.s.sable wall between him and his friends.

As he arrived at this point in his musings, he tried to spring up, knowing that he must make an energetic effort to regain them.

But there was very little spring in his motions, for though the cool draught of water had been delicious, and reclining there restful to a degree, the moment he stirred every joint moved as if its socket was harsh and dry, so that he would not have been surprised had they all creaked. He began to walk with pain and difficulty, with his mind made up as to what he should do. For there below him to his right was the long line of mist, and his object was to keep along parallel with it till he could pa.s.s round the end, which must be somewhere toward the sh.o.r.e, over which they had been carried inland. Once there, he would be able to reach his friends who ought, he felt, to have made some effort to find him in a similar way to that which he now proposed trying himself.

"And by the same rule," he said half aloud with a bitter laugh, as he shifted his gun from one shoulder to the other, "I ought to have gone at once to try and reach them instead of attempting such a mad adventure all alone."

It was too late for repentance, and he tramped wearily on, trying to make out in the lower ground upon which he gazed down to his right, the dense forest and the huge fig-tree in which he had pa.s.sed the night. He laughed the next minute as he saw the impossibility of his search, for he looked down upon the rounded tops of hundreds of such trees rising like islands out of a sea of golden green shot with orange in the glow of the sinking sun.

Before long he found that he must be on the look-out for another resting-place, and that as there would not be time to reach the band of trees at the foot of the mountain, he must find some patch of rocks on the slope along which he was painfully walking. Then, finding that he had left himself but little time, he halted by some greyish cindery blocks whose bases were sunk in volcanic sand, and hungry and faint with thirst, he threw himself down to lie looking up at the golden ball of illumined steam floating above the top of the volcano high up in the wonderfully transparent heavens till the light began to fade away, and then suddenly went out, that is to say, seemed to go out; for, in spite of hunger, thirst, and weariness, Oliver Lane's eyelids dropped to open as sharply, directly, as it seemed to him, and he lay staring with dilated eyes upward at the object he had last seen.

But it had changed, for the cloud, instead of looking golden and orange, as it glowed, was now soft, flocculent and grey.

"There it is again," he said, excitedly then. "I thought it was part of my dream."

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

FRIENDS IN NEED.

He was quite right; it was solid reality, and he was looking at the broad back of a man standing a few yards away, with his hands to his mouth, and who now sent forth a tremendous shout, which was answered from a distance before the man turned, and stepped quickly to his side, displaying the rugged features of Billy Wriggs.

"Ain't dead, are yer, sir?" he cried, sinking on one knee. "Here, have a drink."

He placed his water bottle in the young man's hand and watched him.

"No; dead man couldn't drink that how," he said softly. "Go it, sir; I'll fill it up again. Take a reg'lar good deep swig. Fine stuff, water, when you're thirsty, so long as it aren't hot water, and all bitter and salt. Go it again, sir," he cried, as his rugged face softened into a weak grin of satisfaction. "Ahoy-a! Ahoy! This way."

This last was a tremendous roar through his hands, sent in the direction of the forest below, and as soon as it was answered, the man turned again to Lane.

"Only to think on it being me as found yer, sir. I do call it luck. I come out o' the wood, and I says to myself, 'I shouldn't wonder, Billy, old man, if Muster Lane's over yonder, among them rocks, for it's just the sorter place to make a roost on,' and I come along, and see yer fast asleep, and here yer are, sir, not a bit dead, are yer?"

"No, no, I'm all right, Wriggs, only so stiff, I can hardly move."

"Course yer are, sir. But never you mind about that. You wait till Tommy Smith comes up, and us two'll give yer a real 'poo, sir--none of yer sham 'uns--and make yer jyntes as lissom as injy rubber. Why, sir, we begun to think you was a goner. How did yer get here?"

"Tell me first how you got here."

"That's me as will, sir," cried the man with alacrity, as he keenly watched Lane's efforts to rise, and lent him a hand. "Yer see, we couldn't get through that steam as runs all along across the low land."

"Was any one the worse for getting through?" cried Lane, eagerly, and Billy Wriggs scratched his ear.

"Well, sir, yer see, none on us weren't none the wuss for getting through, 'cause we didn't get through; but lots on us was all the wuss for not getting through. My heye! Talk about too much grog when yer ash.o.r.e, it's nothing to it. It's the tipsyest stuff I ever swallowed.

How did you manage, sir?"

"I--I don't know; I struggled through it, somehow, and then fell down insensible."

"Onsensible, course yer did, sir. It knocks all the gumption out on yer 'fore yer knows where yer are. Ahoy! mate! This way, Tommy. Here he is!"

The trees below them had been parted, and, all scratched and bleeding, Smith appeared, and as soon as he caught sight of Lane, he slapped his legs heavily, turned round, and yelled aloud.

Then he ran up at a trot, grinning hugely.

"That's you, sir," he cried, "and I'm glad on it. They said as we should only find yer cold corpus, and 'No,' I says, 'if we finds his corpus at all, it won't be cold but hot roast. There's no getting cold here. But I knows better. Too much stuff in him,' I says. 'He'll sarc.u.mwent all the trouble somehow. Master Oliver Lane aren't the lad to lie down and give up,' and I was right, warn't I, Billy?"

"Ay, mate, you was right this time."

"Course I was, Billy; but yer needn't ha' been in such a hurry to find Mr Lane all to yerself. But yer allus was a graspin' sort o' chap, Billy."