He would listen to no
arguments. The desire to get to the mouth of the cavern, and kill Leith
before the morning, had produced an insanity, and we crawled and climbed
along the face of those basalt cliffs in a manner that chilled my
spinal marrow. Holman possessed the courage of a maniac. His imagination
was blinded to the dangers that lay alongside the crumbling shelves of
rock, and I scrambled behind him wondering dimly what would happen to
Edith and her sister if an unkind fate flung us from the ledge into the
darkness from which the soft croon of the chestnut clumps came up like a
warning against our foolhardiness.
Holman paused at the end of a wearisome climb, and he drew himself
upright. At that moment the cloud-harried moon dragged herself from
beneath the pack, and the young fellow gave a cry of joy.
"We can do it from here, Verslun," he cried. "I see a path to the top.
Come along, man!"
"What about Kaipi?" I gasped. "We'll never find our way back here."
"Let him sit there," he snorted. "Hurry or the moon will be under the
clouds before we cross the cliff.
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