Page 348 - The snake's pass

336 THE snake's pass.
Norah and I knelt down, hand-in-hand, and with full
hearts thanked God for having saved us from so terrible
a doom.
The waves of the torrent rushing by us at first came
almost level with us; but the stream diminished so
quickly, that in an incredibly short time we found our-
selves perched on the top of a high jutting rock, stand-
ing sharply up from the sloping sides of a deep ravine,
where but a few minutes before the bog had been.
Carefully we climbed down, and sought a more secure
place on the base of the ridge of rocks behind us. The
deep ravine lay below us, down whose sides began to
rattle ominously, here and there, masses of earth and
stones deprived of their support below where the torrent
had scoured their base.
Lighter and lighter grew the sky over the mountain,
till at last one red ray shot up like a crack in the vault
of heaven, and a great light seemed to smite the rocks
that glistened in their coat of wet. Across the ravine
we saw Joyce and Dick beginning to descend, so as to
come over to us. This aroused us, and we shouted to
them to keep back, and waved our arms to them in
signal ; for we feared that some landslip or some new
outpouring of the bog might sweep them away, or that
the bottom of the ravine might be still only treacherous
slime. They saw our gesticulations, if they did not hear
our voices, and held back. Then we pointed up the ravine,
and signalled them that we would move up the edge of
the rocks. This we proceeded to do, and they followed