The Filibusters, Charles John Cutcliffe Hyne [best book clubs .TXT] 📗

THE bullets whooped through the water, or spat viciously against the rocks, but the swirls of current swept us to this side and to that like corks in a flooded gutter, and so through no device of our own we made but indifferent targets. Still, if lead enough was expended, there was a chance that one or other of us might get hit, and as a consequence the fellows blazed away whilst we were in range as fast as they could shift cartridges.

But the contour of the cafton came to our assistance. The rattle and vibration of the firing abruptly ceased, and the lingering echoes of it died away amongst the rocky walls. We had all had our narrow shaves, of course, but as it turned out none of us had been so much as grazed by that lead storm. I looked up for a second from my struggle with the waters, and threw a glance behind. The canon had twisted; we were in a reach now at right angles to the last; and we had left the rifle-fire behind us. We had left also all chance of harm from Maxillo’s men unless they chose to follow us, which, in view of the terrific appearance of the route, was unlikely. For a handy swimmer, a passage down the canon there might be, though that we had got to learn; but a passage back to the valley there certainly was not, since no human man could have swum against those rapids and the sluice of that stream; and other means of warping along there were none.

However, if we had successfully left this Scylla behind there was a very good imitation of Charybdis in front. Our ears told us of its nearness, and the danger of it branded itself on our brains in aching letters. If there is one sound in Nature which is unmistakable, that sound is the roar of a great waterfall; and the deep diapason of the cascading river ahead grew louder and fuller every second as we raced towards it.

Already I was heavily wearied with the swimming; my highest ambition was to keep my mouth and nose free from the water; and, in fact, I navigated myself like a log in a rapid. Carew and the priest were much the same; and even if there had been any chance of getting out of the race of the stream, I do not think they could have managed it any more than myself. But as it happened there was not. The walls of the canon rose up on either side of us as smooth and sheer as the walls of a dock, and quite unscalable; and every second the bellowing fall ahead grew more near.

I fancy then that we all expected to be smashed up into the smallest kind of pulp within the next minute, but we had enough doggedness left to keep on swimming and wait till execution actually came.

But then our headlong progress slackened. We found ourselves in a kind of backwash, close on the lip of the fall itself, and in the swirling boil of waters which existed there we simmered round and round, in company with a scum of grasses, a drowned ox, and scraps of other flotsam, till we were spewed up on a narrow ribbon of shingle and left there to drain.

Father Jupe sighed quietly. “What a blessed taste of ease.”

“Heavenly,” said Carew. ” We’ve been through hades, and quite possibly there’s worse to follow. But for the present it’s heavenly.” (He coughed and spat out more water.) ” Birch, you refused to drink with me once, but I bet you’d do it now if we’d a pint of whisky in camp. Lucky this water’s moderately warm or we’d never have got through it all.”

Nobody spoke much after that, and we lay where we were for the better part of an hour. It was pretty chilly. No ray of sunshine got to us of course. Indeed, so deep was the cafton, and so steep were the walls, that at the level of the stream nothing ever struggled down brighter than a dim grey twilight. And added to this an air was blowing up from the caflon, sodden with water from the falls and the spouting rapids, which came to us dank and cold as a sea fog. So there was little enough comfort to be found in waiting overlong.

We soon started searching with our eyes for a possible track downwards otherwise than through the water, but with small enough success. The beach of shingle where we rested was a mere ledge; on the other side of the cafton the boil of backwash creamed up against the vertical wall itself; and down stream we could see nothing for the twilight and the water smoke from the fall. However, if there was a path, the sooner we found it the better; and if there wasn’t, we might as well break our necks prospecting, and get it over.

Here was a sound idea. I didn’t wait for either of the other two to give a lead. There had been a bit too much directing of other people recently to quite suit my taste. So I got up and went off without consulting anybody, and if they chose to follow, there was nothing to hinder.

“Good man, Birch,” sang out Carew when I started. ” Now, Jupe, wish him luck.”

“I shall be delighted to pray for your soul, Mr. Birch,” said Jupe drily.

At the end of the beach of shingle was a narrow cleavage ledge, six inches wide, and some couple of feet above the water. I stepped out along this with my face to the wall of rock, balancing my nicest. As a purser on a steamboat, I had always held a fine contempt for sailor-men on windjammers; but just then I would have given a good deal, if I could have looked back at a year’s experience amongst the climbing places on a sailing ship.

The ledges went on, sometimes up, sometimes down, sometimes making one wade knee-deep through hissing water, sometimes setting one to hang like a fly, on dizzy slabs far up the rock. The others had followed the lead and were scrambling after me, and I was not prayerful for their safety. If they had both come to grief I should have been complacent. They were a pair of utter scoundrels, and Sacaronduca would have been well rid of both of them. But though the chance more than once came in my way, I could not quite harden myself up to killing either, though my own life would have been all the more purchasable if they were out of the way.

However, as we moved onwards, it began to look as though private murder might with safeness be postponed indefinitely. We had worked down past the main fall, a roaring slide of water that sent up a dense geyser of mist from its foot, and we hung with fingers and toes to the last frail trace of ledge. There was no possibility of climbing down, or of scrambling onwards or upwards. The two alternatives were to go back and starve or jump.

The churning white water at the foot of the fall was a good sixty feet below, and it looked shallow. If we jumped, we should probably be smashed to pulp on some slimly covered rocks, and yet a jump was the only vague possible chance left for saving our lives. The distance made one sick to look at, but waiting only made matters worse. Already my toes and ringers were so tired that I could hardly hold on with them.

“One,” I said.

“Two,” I said.

“Three,” I said, and took a grip on my courage, and chucked myself away from the rock, and jumped.

It was horrible. I could feel the air fairly whistling out of my carcase. How any man can dive except to save his life I cannot tell. And then feet foremost I hit the surface. The water spumed away from me in sheets and fountains; it seemed hard, like rubber; but it checked the violence of my fall, and though my feet did hit the gravel of the stream bed, which for an instant I saw dry and bare, the impact was no harder than if I had dropped from a sixfoot bank.

But instantly the