The Black Tor: A Tale of the Reign of James the First by George Manville Fenn (best romance books of all time .txt) 📖

too, save for the stout ash-butt of his spliced rod, and he knew that it would be impossible to defend himself with that for long against four strong men, who were apparently only too eager to get hold of the heir of the rival house, and drag him before their lord. For that they were Sir Edward Eden’s men the lad had not a doubt.

But Ralph had little time for thought; action was the thing, and he splashed on, glancing from right to left to find a spot where he could land and take to his heels—an impossibility there, for he soon saw that his only chance was to climb, and that chance was small.

Then, as the men followed some forty yards behind, he saw the light of hope. Not far ahead, the water looked black and still, as it glided through a narrow defile, shut in by the rocks. That meant deep water; but if he could reach that, he would have to swim, and the men probably would not dare to follow.

Already the shallows were coming to an end, the water reaching to his knees; and it was here that, encouraged and bullied into making a fresh attack, the dogs overtook him once more, and half swimming, half making leaps, they came at him, the bigger avoiding a blow, and seizing him by the left, fortunately without hurt, the animal’s teeth meeting only in the padding of the short breeches of the period; but it held on, growling, and shaking its head violently, while its companion, after a deal of barking, dashed in on the right.

This time Ralph’s aim was surer and quicker, the dog receiving a sharp cut across the ear from the butt of the rod, and going down at once, to begin howling, and swimming in a circle.

Rid thus of one enemy, the lad proceeded to get rid of the second by a very simple plan. Lowering his left hand, he got hold of the strap which formed the dog’s collar, and in spite of its struggles and worryings, went on as fast as he could go—slowly enough, all the same—to where the water deepened; and as it reached his thigh, he bent his knees, with the natural result that as the dog held tenaciously to its mouthful of cloth and padding, its head was beneath the water.

A few seconds were sufficient to make it quit its hold, and come up choking and barking; but in obedience to the urging on of one of the men, to pluckily renew the attack.

A sharp crack from the butt knocked all the remaining courage out of its head, and it turned, howling, to swim back toward its masters.

“Here, it’s no good, young Darley,” yelled one of the men. “You may give up now. We’ve got you fast.”

“And it’ll be the worst for you, if you don’t. We have got you now.”

“Hold me tight, then,” muttered the lad, with a triumphant feeling at his chances of escape beginning to make him glow.

“You mustn’t go there,” shouted another. “It’s woundy deep, and you’ll get sucked down.”

“Come and be sucked down after me,” muttered Ralph, as the dogs began barking again furiously, but refused to follow and attack, keeping close to the men, who were all now in the river, wading slowly, the walls having grown too precipitous for them to keep on the sides.

Ralph’s progress was slow enough too, for the water had deepened till it was above his waist, and the next minute was nearly to his armpits, while the river having narrowed now to half its width, the stream though deep came faster, and grew harder to stem.

“D’you hear, youngster!” roared the leader. “You’ll be drownded.”

“Better that than be caught and dragged up to the Black Tor for that wretched boor, Mark Eden, to triumph over me,” thought Ralph; and he pushed boldly on, forced his way a dozen yards, and then made a step, to find no bottom, and going down over his head.

“Told you so,” rang in his ears, as he struck out and rose, to find himself being borne back; but a few strokes took him to the right side, where he snatched at some overhanging ferns rooted in the perpendicular wall of rock, checked himself for a few moments, and looked back, to see the four men, nearly breast-deep, a dozen yards behind, waiting for him to be swept down to their grasp.

“There, give up!” cried another, “for you’re drownded. You don’t know the waters here, like we do. Some o’ that goes right down into the mine.”

To the astonishment of the men, who did not dare to venture farther, the lad did not surrender, but looked sharply about to try and fully grasp his position and his chances of escape. Ahead the water certainly appeared deeper, for it glided on towards him, looking black, oily, and marked with sinuous lines. There was no ripple to indicate a shallow, and he could feel, from the pressure against him, that it would be impossible to stem it in swimming; while most ominous of all, right in the centre, a little way ahead, there was a spot where the water was a little depressed. It kept circling round every now and then, forming a funnel-shaped opening about a foot across, showing plainly enough that the men were right, and that a portion of the stream passed down there into some hole in the rock, to form one of the subterranean courses of which there were several in the district, as he knew both where rivulets disappeared, and also suddenly gushed out into the light of day.

Ralph grasped then at once that it would be impossible to escape by swimming against such a stream; that if he could have done so, there was the horrible risk of being sucked down into some awful chasm to instant death; that he could not climb up the wall of rock where he hung on then; and that, if he let go, he would be borne along in a few moments to the men’s hands; and then, that he would be bound, and dragged away a prisoner, to his shame, and all through trying to get those unfortunate fish.

“It’s of no use,” he muttered despairingly, as he looked above him again, and, as he did so, saw that the men were laughing at his predicament, for, as Touchstone the clown told the shepherd, he was “in a parlous case.”

But hope is a fine thing, and gives us rays of light even in the darkest places. Just when Ralph felt most despondent, it occurred to him that there was another way out of the difficulty, and he proceeded to put it in force by looking straight ahead, along the wall of rock, which ran down into the water, and there, just beyond the tuft by which he held on, and certainly within reach, was one of the perpendicular cracks which divided the stone into blocks. In an instant he had stretched out his left hand, forced it in there, drawn himself along till he could get the other hand in, and was safe so far; and to his great joy found, by a little searching, that he could find foot-hold, for the horizontal crack ran some four feet below the surface, and afforded him sufficient standing room, if he could only find something to hold on by above.

For the moment he was safe, but his object was to get along the wall, till he could find a place where he could climb the rocky side of the river; and once clear of the water, he felt that it would go hard if he could not find some way to the top, the more easily from the fact that above the steep piece of wall down into the water the trees grew so abundantly that a climber would for a certainty find plenty of help.

The men remained motionless in the water, watching in the full expectation of seeing the lad swept down to them; but he held fast, and once more reaching forward, he strained outward till he caught a tuft of grass, crept on along the submerged ledge to that, and from there gained a large patch of tough broom. Then came two or three easy movements onward, bringing the fugitive abreast of the sink, which was larger than it had appeared from below, and Ralph shuddered as he felt that any one who approached the vortex would for a certainty be dragged down.

For a few moments he clung there, the nervous thoughts of what might be if he slipped and were caught in the whirlpool being sufficient to half paralyse him; then turning angry at his feeling of cowardice, he reached boldly out again, found fresh hand-hold, and did the same again and again, till he was a dozen yards beyond the sink-hole, and had to stop and think. For the wall was smoother than ever; the stream ran stronger; the distance between the two sides being less, it looked deeper; and the next place where he could find hand-hold was apparently too far to reach.

Still, it was his only chance, and taking fast hold with his right, and somehow thinking the while of Mark’s passage along the surface of the High Cliff, he reached out farther and farther, pressing his breast against the rock, edging his feet along, and then stopping at his fullest stretch, to find the little root of ivy he aimed at grasping still six or seven inches away.

The dead silence preserved by the men below was broken by the barking of one of the dogs. Then all was still again, and Ralph felt that his only chance was to steady himself for a moment with his feet, loosen his hold with his right hand, and let himself glide along the face of the rock forward till his left touched the ivy, and then hold on.

If he missed catching hold—?

“I mustn’t think of such a thing,” he muttered; and he at once put his plan into action, letting himself glide forward.

As a scholar, fresh from a big school, he ought to have been more mathematically correct, and known that in describing the arc of a circle his left hand would go lower; but he did not stop to think. The consequence was that as his fingers glided over the rough stone, they passed a few inches beneath the tough stem he sought to grasp, and once in motion, he could not stop himself. He clutched at the stone with his right hand, and his nails scratched over it, as he vainly strove to find a prominence or crevice to check him; but all in vain; the pressure of the running water on the lower part of his body helped to destroy his balance, and with a faint cry, he went headlong into the gliding stream, the men simultaneously giving vent to a yell, half of horror, half of satisfaction.

“The sink-hole! Shall I be sucked down?” was the thought that flashed across the lad’s brain, like a lurid light, as he went under; then he struck out vigorously for the side, and as he rose to the surface saw that he was being drawn toward the hole where it gaped horribly, and closed, and gaped again, a few yards away.

If any boy who reads this cannot swim, let him feel that he is sinning against himself, and neglecting a great duty, till he can plunge without a trace of nervousness into deep water, and make his way upon the surface easily and well. Fortunately for Ralph Darley, he was quite at home in the water, and the strong firm strokes he took were sufficient to carry him well in toward the side, so that he passed the little whirlpool where its force was weakest; and as the men below closed together, and waded a couple of steps to meet him, they had the mortification of seeing him clinging