Elfride grew pale, and shifted her little feet uneasily.
Knight lowered the glass.
“I think we had better return,” he said. “That cloud which is raining on them may soon reach us. Why, you look ill. How is that?”
“Something in the air affects my face.”
“Those fair cheeks are very fastidious, I fear,” returned Knight tenderly. “This air would make those rosy that were never so before, one would think—eh, Nature’s spoilt child?”
Elfride’s colour returned again.
“There is more to see behind us, after all,” said Knight.
She turned her back upon the boat and Stephen Smith, and saw, towering still higher than themselves, the vertical face of the hill on the right, which did not project seaward so far as the bed of the valley, but formed the back of a small cove, and so was visible like a concave wall, bending round from their position towards the left.
The composition of the huge hill was revealed to its backbone and marrow here at its rent extremity. It consisted of a vast stratification of blackish-gray slate, unvaried in its whole height by a single change of shade.
It is with cliffs and mountains as with persons; they have what is called a presence, which is not necessarily proportionate to their actual bulk. A little cliff will impress you powerfully; a great one not at all. It depends, as with man, upon the countenance of the cliff.
“I cannot bear to look at that cliff,” said Elfride. “It has a horrid personality, and makes me shudder. We will go.”
“Can you climb?” said Knight. “If so, we will ascend by that path over the grim old fellow’s brow.”
“Try me,” said Elfride disdainfully. “I have ascended steeper slopes than that.”
From where they had been loitering, a grassy path wound along inside a bank, placed as a safeguard for unwary pedestrians, to the top of the precipice, and over it along the hill in an inland direction.
“Take my arm, Miss Swancourt,” said Knight.
“I can get on better without it, thank you.”
When they were one quarter of the way up, Elfride stopped to take breath. Knight stretched out his hand.
She took it, and they ascended the remaining slope together. Reaching the very top, they sat down to rest by mutual consent.
“Heavens, what an altitude!” said Knight between his pants, and looking far over the sea. The cascade at the bottom of the slope appeared a mere span in height from where they were now.
Elfride was looking to the left. The steamboat was in full view again, and by reason of the vast surface of sea their higher position uncovered it seemed almost close to the shore.
“Over that edge,” said Knight, “where nothing but vacancy appears, is a moving compact mass. The wind strikes the face of the rock, runs up it, rises like a fountain to a height far above our heads, curls over us in an arch, and disperses behind us. In fact, an inverted cascade is there—as perfect as the Niagara Falls—but rising instead of falling, and air instead of water. Now look here.”
Knight threw a stone over the bank, aiming it as if to go onward over the cliff. Reaching the verge, it towered into the air like a bird, turned back, and alighted on the ground behind them. They themselves were in a dead calm.
“A boat crosses Niagara immediately at the foot of the falls, where the water is quite still, the fallen mass curving under it. We are in precisely the same position with regard to our atmospheric cataract here. If you run back from the cliff fifty yards, you will be in a brisk wind. Now I daresay over the bank is a little backward current.”
Knight rose and leant over the bank. No sooner was his head above it than his hat appeared to be sucked from his head—slipping over his forehead in a seaward direction.
“That’s the backward eddy, as I told you,” he cried, and vanished over the little bank after his hat.
Elfride waited one minute; he did not return. She waited another, and there was no sign of him.
A few drops of rain fell, then a sudden shower.
She arose, and looked over the bank. On the other side were two or three yards of level ground—then a short steep preparatory slope—then the verge of the precipice.
On the slope was Knight, his hat on his head. He was on his hands and knees, trying to climb back to the level ground. The rain had wetted the shaly surface of the incline. A slight superficial wetting of the soil hereabout made it far more slippery to stand on than the same soil thoroughly drenched. The inner substance was still hard, and was lubricated by the moistened film.
“I find a difficulty in getting back,” said Knight.
Elfride’s heart fell like lead.
“But you can get back?” she wildly inquired.
Knight strove with all his might for two or three minutes, and the drops of perspiration began to bead his brow.
“No, I am unable to do it,” he answered.
Elfride, by a wrench of thought, forced away from her mind the sensation that Knight was in bodily danger. But attempt to help him she must. She ventured upon the treacherous incline, propped herself with the closed telescope, and gave him her hand before he saw her movements.
“O Elfride! why did you?” said he. “I am afraid you have only endangered yourself.”
And as if to prove his statement, in making an endeavour by her assistance they both slipped lower, and then he was again stayed. His foot was propped by a bracket of quartz rock, balanced on the verge of the precipice. Fixed by this, he steadied her, her head being about a foot below the beginning of the slope. Elfride had dropped the glass; it rolled to the edge and vanished over it into a nether sky.
“Hold tightly to me,” he said.
She flung her arms round his neck with such a firm grasp that whilst he
