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Scarlett nodded, and let himself slide slowly, to find, and call up to his companion, that the hole went down at a slope into the darkness, so that he was not swinging by the rope, but supporting himself thereby, as he glided down over the shaley earth of which the hill was composed, but only to come to a sudden stop as he found that the hole zigzagged back in the opposite direction at a similar angle to that by which he had descended.
But it did not come on to rain; the wood burned merrily, and after a piece of shaley limestone had been found it was placed in the fire where the embers were most clear, and the fish laid upon it to cook. The success was not great, for when the fish began to feel the heat, and hissed and sputtered, the piece of stone began to send off splinters, with a loud crack, from time to time.
That sangar was a death-trap to its garrison their only line of escape was across some open, shaley slopes within four hundred yards of our firing line, and the Levies were now working along the hill, and would catch them in the sangar if they didn't clear out.
It led in straight toward the heart of the wood, and was followed, with ever-increasing difficulty, for a distance of about three-quarters of a mile until it was lost on hard, shaley ground, nor were the utmost efforts of the party equal to finding it again.
I shrank from making any movement, but, softly and silently, Ching crept nearly to the opening by which we had entered, and began moving the fragments embedded in sand, which formed the flooring of our narrow refuge, turning over peat shaley pieces, and laying them naturally between us and the light, and, after planting each heavy piece, scooping up the dry sand with both hands, and pouring it over the stone.
Droughts and floods have little effect on it; it will grow in any soil, from a sand to a heavy loam, amongst rocks, or on a gravelly or shaley land. Naturally, it does best in good land, but there are hundreds of cases where trees are doing well and bearing heavily on land that is by no means fruit land.
The great canyon spread out again, once she had passed the waterworn Gorge, and peak after peak rose up to right and left where yawning side canyons led in. But all were set on edge and reared up to dizzying heights; and along their scarred flanks there lay huge slides of shaley rock, ready to slip at the touch of a hand.
And now, as they slowly and with difficulty made their way along the steep mountain-side, a low murmur, gradually growing in strength and volume of sound, told them that they were approaching a waterfall or cataract of some sort: and after another half-hour of exhausting and perilous crawling, and slipping, and sliding over the loose and shaley ground, they came in sight of it as it opened out before them from behind an enormous, precipitous crag a solid column of water about twenty feet in diameter, leaping out of a narrow cleft in the rock some three hundred feet above them, and gradually resolving itself into mist as it plunged down into the dark and gloomy depths of the gorge below.
But he had no time to think, for directly he touched the shaley floor, the rope was drawn up, and almost directly after, he was hastily taking from the rope the burdens which it bore, while, to his surprise, Scarlett came next. "You?" said Fred in his wonder. "Yes; I thought I could help most here; and it seemed so terrible a place for you to be alone."
On they went, suspended in mid-air at a giddy height, along interminable balconies without parapets; and below, the cliffs dropped avalanche-like, fell straight, bare, without a patch of vegetation or a tree. In places they looked as if they had been split down by the blows of an axe huge growths of petrified wood; in others they seemed sawn through shaley layers of slate.
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