Rowland’s course was also a steep descent, and he attacked it so
precipitately that he afterwards marveled he had not broken his neck.
It was a ten minutes’ headlong scramble. Half-way down he saw something
that made him dizzy; he saw what Singleton had seen. In the gorge below
them a vague white mass lay tumbled upon the stones. He let himself go,
blindly, fiercely. Singleton had reached the rocky bottom of the ravine
before him, and had bounded forward and fallen upon his knees. Rowland
overtook him and his own legs collapsed. The thing that yesterday was
his friend lay before him as the chance of the last breath had left it,
and out of it Roderick’s face stared upward, open-eyed, at the sky.
He had fallen from a great height, but he was singularly little
disfigured. The rain had spent its torrents upon him, and his clothes
and hair were as wet as if the billows of the ocean had flung him upon
the strand. An attempt to move him would show some hideous fracture,
some horrible physical dishonor; but what Rowland saw on first looking
at him was only a strangely serene expression of life. The eyes were
dead, but in a short time, when Rowland had closed them, the whole
face seemed to awake. The rain had washed away all blood; it was as if
Violence, having done her work, had stolen away in shame. Roderick’s
face might have shamed her; it looked admirably handsome.
“He was a beautiful man!” said Singleton.
They looked up through their horror at the cliff from which he had
apparently fallen, and which lifted its blank and stony face above
him, with no care now but to drink the sunshine on which his eyes were
closed, and then Rowland had an immense outbreak of pity and anguish. At
last they spoke of carrying him back to the inn. “There must be three or
four men,” Rowland said, “and they must be brought here quickly. I have
not the least idea where we are.”
“We are at about three hours’ walk from home,” said Singleton. “I will
go for help; I can find my way.”
“Remember,” said Rowland, “whom you will have to face.”
“I remember,” the excellent fellow answered. “There was nothing I could
ever do for him in life; I will do what I can now.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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