第94章

"Goodness me, Leo," I said, "surely we are not going to climb that precipice!"Leo shrugged his shoulders, being in a condition of half-fascinated, half-expectant mystification, and as he did so Ayesha with a sudden move began to climb the cliff, and of course we had to follow her.It was perfectly marvellous to see the ease and grace with which she sprang from rock to rock, and swung herself along the ledges.The ascent was not, however, so difficult as it seemed, although there were one or two nasty places where it did not do to look behind you, the fact being that the rock still sloped here, and was not absolutely precipitous, as it was higher up.

In this way we, with no great labor, mounted to the height of some fifty feet above our last standing-place, the only really troublesome thing to manage being Job's board, and in doing so drew some fifty or sixty paces to the left of our starting-point, for we went up like a crab, sideways.Presently we reached a ledge, narrow enough at first, but which widened as we followed it, and moreover sloped inward like the petal of a flower, So that as we followed it we gradually got into a kind of rut or fold of rock that grew deeper and deeper, till at last it resembled a Devonshire lane in stone, and hid us perfectly from the gaze of anybody on the slope below, if there had been anybody to gaze.This lane (which appeared to be a natural formation) continued for some fifty or sixty paces, and then suddenly ended in a cave, also natural, running at right angles to it.I am sure that it was a natural cave, and not hollowed by the hand of man, because of its irregular and contorted shape and course, which gave it the appearance of having been blown bodily in the mountain by some frightful eruption of gas following the line of least resistance.All the caves hollowed by the ancients of Ko^r, on the contrary, were cut out with the most perfect regularity and symmetry.At the mouth of this cave Ayesha halted, and bade us light the two lamps, which I did, giving one to her and keeping the other myself.Then, taking the lead, she advanced down the cavern, picking her way with great care, as indeed it was necessary to do, for the floor was most irregularstrewn with boulders like the bed of a stream, and in some places pitted with deep holes, in which it would have been easy to break one's leg.

This cavern we pursued for twenty minutes or more; it being, so far as I could form a judgmentowing to its numerous twists and turns no easy taskabout a quarter of a mile long.

At last, however, we halted at its farther end, and while I was still trying to pierce the gloom a great gust of air came tearing down it, and extinguished both the lamps.

Ayesha called to us, and we crept up to her, for she was a little in front, and were rewarded with a view that was positively appalling in its gloom and grandeur.Before us was a mighty chasm in the black rock, jagged and torn and splintered through it in a far-past age by some awful convulsion of nature, as though it had been cleft by stroke upon stroke of the lightning.This chasm, which was bounded by a precipice on the hither, and presumably, though we could not see it, on the farther side also, may have measured any width across, but from its darkness I do not think that it can have been very broad.It was impossible to make out much of its outline, or how far it ran, for the simple reason that the point where we were standing was so far from the upper surface of the cliff, at least fifteen hundred or two thousand feet, that only a very dim light struggled down to us from above.The mouth of the cavern that we had been following gave on to a most curious and tremendous spur of rock, which jutted out in mid-air into the gulf before us for a distance of some fifty yards, coming to a sharp point at its termination, and resembling nothing that I can think of so much as the spur upon the leg of a cock in shape.This huge spur was attached only to the parent precipice at its base, which was, of course, enormous, just as the cock's spur is attached to its leg.Otherwise it was utterly unsupported.

"Here we must pass," said Ayesha."Be careful lest giddiness overcome you, or the wind sweep you into the gulf beneath, for of a truth it hath no bottom;" and, without giving us any further time to get scared, she started walking along the spur, leaving us to follow her as best we might.I was next to her, then came Job, painfully dragging his plank, while Leo brought up the rear.It was a wonderful sight to see this intrepid woman gliding fearlessly along that dreadful place.For my part, when I had gone but a very few yards, what between the pressure of the air and the awful sense of the consequences that a slip would entail, I found it necessary to go down on my hands and knees and crawl, and so did the other two.

But Ayesha never condescended to this.On she went, leaning her body against the gusts of wind, and never seeming to lose her head or her balance.

In a few minutes we had crossed some twenty paces of this awful bridge, which got narrower at every step, and then all of a sudden a great gust came tearing along the gorge.I saw Ayesha lean herself against it, but the strong draught got under her dark cloak, and tore it from her, and away it went down the wind flapping like a wounded bird.It was dreadful to see it go till it was lost in the blackness.I clung to the saddle of rock and looked round, while the great spur vibrated with a humming sound beneath us, like a living thing.The sight was a truly awesome one.There we were poised in the gloom between earth and heaven.

Beneath us were hundreds upon hundreds of feet of emptiness that gradually grew darker, till at last it was absolutely black, and at what depth it ended is more than I can guess.Above were space upon space of giddy air, and far, far away a line of blue sky.And down this vast gulf upon which we were pinnacled the great draught dashed and roared, driving clouds and misty wreaths of vapor before it, till we were nearly blinded and utterly confused.