"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.