Again, as he drew near the
rock-strewn base of the hill, a sound as of some one scrambling
through the underbrush came to his straining ears, but the noise
ceased even as he stopped to listen. He laughed at his fears. An
echo, no doubt, of his own footsteps; the wind thrashing a broken
limb; the action of the water upon some obstruction along the bank.
Nevertheless he dropped to his hands and knees when he came to the
outlying boulders and jagged slabs close to the foot of the black,
towering mass. There was no protecting foliage here. Never in his
life had he known the moon to shine so brightly. He whispered curses
to the high-hanging lantern in the sky.
The murmur of the river below brought a consoling thought to him.
He would not suffer from thirst. He could go without food for a
couple of days, even longer. Had not certain English women survived
days and days of a voluntary hunger strike? But he could not do
without water. In the black hours before dawn he would climb down
from his eerie den and drink his fill at the river's brink.
Now a sickening fear gripped him. What if he were to find it
impossible to scale that almost perpendicular steep? What if those
hand-hewn clefts in the rock fell short of reaching to the cave's
entrance? The processes of time and the elements may have sealed
or obliterated the shallow hand and toe holds.
Pages:
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342