First in the Field Part 65

And yet it was not terrible, he thought the next moment. It was grand, glorious, lovely, and the shelf below him, with its water, more tempting than anything he had ever seen before.

"I must get down," he said; and going farther along he sought for a means, but had not far to go, for he soon grasped the fact that this shelf was only some eighty or a hundred feet off the top, which had slipped a little and then stopped. It had broken away, gone down some fifty feet, and then been checked.

While as he gazed down at the old edge of the precipice, and over it into the gorge below, he could hear the soft, whistling, humming trickle of the water, and it increased his eagerness. He must get down, he thought--but how? There were no overhanging boughs, no roots which had forced their way between cracks in the rock and gone on down and down searching for the moisture of that tiny rill which went over the edge to its present depth; and there were no stout bushes growing in the side beneath him. All there was clean, broken-away stone, which could only be descended by stepping from projection to projection, while if any one slipped--

"Well, what if he did?" said the boy contemptuously, as he gazed down: "he would, at the most, only get a few scratches and bruises. Here's the best spot, and I'm going down."

Without further hesitation he laid down his gun, turned upon his breast and lowered his legs, found footing easy to get upon a ledge, and lowered himself more and more till he was at the full stretch of his limbs, when a horrible thought occurred to him: suppose, when he jumped down upon that broad shelf formed by a sliding of the rock till it was checked by some inequality, his weight should be sufficient to start it going again, and he should be carried with it backward into the gulf.

"What nonsense!" he thought; "why, my weight upon it will be no more than that of a fly;" and he lowered himself a little more, found it harder, moved to the right, and got on to a firm ledge, and from that to another, and was soon half-way down.

There he came to a stop, for he could find neither foot nor hand hold; and there he was at last, spread-eagled against the perpendicular rock, unable to go down, and, upon determining to go up instead, utterly unable to retrace his steps.

"Oh, this is absurd," he thought, and looking sidewise, he saw a little projection which seemed as if it would do then, feeling that if he stopped longer in his cramped position he would be less able to act, he measured the distance with his eyes, gathered himself together, made a clumsy spring, got a foot on the projection, but missed the crevice into which he meant to thrust his right hand, and went scrambling and sliding down the other five-and-twenty feet, to come into a sitting position on the broken stones, scratched, bruised, and uttering a loud groan of pain.

"Oh my bones!" he cried, with a laugh and a wince of pain, as he began to rub himself; and then, as he looked up, a sudden chill struck him, for, he said to himself:

"Why, it's like a trap. I can never get up there again. I ought to have looked farther before I leaped."

He limped a little as he stood up, and his arms both required a rub, especially about the elbows; but while he performed these little comforting offices he was not idle, for he carefully inspected the shelf. Escape on the one side did not seem possible, for it was over into the gorge; the other side, a curve, was one nearly perpendicular wall of rock, along which he walked from where he stood to the ends at the edge of the precipice and back.

"It is a regular pitfall," thought Nic; and then, determined to make the best of things, he lay down upon his chest over the clear murmuring water, lowered his lips, and took a long, deep, delicious draught of the sparkling fluid.

"That's refres.h.i.+ng," said the boy to himself, and he came to a sitting position on the warm stone, took out his piece of bread cake, and looked up at the wall facing him, as he broke off a morsel of damper.

"Doesn't look so high as it did before I had that drink," he said, with a laugh. "Not half so high; and by the time I've eaten my bread it will only look half as high once more. Pooh! I can climb up. Cake's good."

He sat munching away contentedly enough now, stopping from time to time for a fresh draught of water; and as he ate and drank he forgot the awkwardness of his position in wonder and admiration of the mountain precipice before him, and at last crept to the edge of that upon which he had been seated, to obtain another look down into the mighty gorge.

"Ah, it's very grand," he sighed; "but it's time I climbed out of this."

He started, for he heard a sharp double click, like the c.o.c.king of a gun, and looked up behind at the edge from which he had descended.

"Cricket or gra.s.shopper," he thought; and then he felt, to use a familiar old saying, as if his blood ran cold; for a slight movement at the top had caught his attention, and he found himself gazing at the muzzle of his gun, so foreshortened that there seemed to be no barrel-- nothing but a round hole, and behind it a glittering eye.

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR.

TRUST FOR TRUST.

"Some one found my gun and taking aim at me," thought Nic, feeling thoroughly how bad a plan it was for any one to bring out a gun for self-defence and then leave it for an enemy to seize.

That watch kept upon the gun muzzle did not last many moments, for a rough, mocking voice said loudly:

"Well: come to take me? Here I am."

"Leather!--I mean, I mean Frank Mayne," cried Nic joyously, as he sprang to his feet; "found you at last!"

"Yes," said the convict bitterly, "you have found me at last. Where are your men?"

"What men?" said Nic, staring.

"The bloodhounds you've brought to hunt me," said the convict.

"Don't talk nonsense!" cried Nic sharply. "You don't think I should bring any one to hunt you?"

"Why not?"

"Because you know I wouldn't be such a brute. But, I say, I was right then. I've been trying ever since you went away to think out where you could be gone."

"And sending the police after me," said the convict bitterly.

"You know better than that," cried Nic; "but, I say, I was right then.

I felt sure you would be here."

"Why should you be?" said the man suspiciously.

"Because, don't you remember once, months ago, talking about the gorge?"

"True, I did; I had forgotten. But where are the police now?"

"Gone back to the port. How did you know they had been?"

"From the blacks."

"There, I knew it!" cried Nic. "The cunning rascals, and they pretended they had no idea of where you were."

"Poor fellows," said the convict, smiling bitterly; "they are faithful enough."

"But they might have told me," said Nic. "Even you don't seem to trust me now."

"How can a man, who is hunted like a wild beast with dogs and black trackers, trust any one, boy?" cried the convict fiercely. "You know what it would have been if they had found me, and I had run instead of surrendering. They would have shot me down like a savage beast."

Nic nodded as he gazed up at the fierce countenance, whose eyes seemed to glare down at him.

"There," continued the convict, "you have found me. Of course you know there is a heavy reward. You can earn it for pocket money."

"Yes," cried Nic, speaking fiercely now, "and go over to the village tuck shop, and spend it with my school-fellows."

"Of course," said the man banteringly. "Only there's one drawback, boy.

You are caught in a trap there, and when you are found there will only be your bones."

"Oh, I say, Leather, what a savage you have turned! I say, have a bit of damper? I have some left."

The man made no reply for a few moments. Then, in an altered tone:

"Have you found any way out?"