Page:Doughty--Mirrikh or A woman from Mars.djvu/217

 came to be examined was the fact of his being an Englishman known.

“By Jove, this is a bad business!” said the Doctor after Padma left us. “I’ve been expecting something of this sort, Wylde. The only thing left is for us to turn Buddhists. Oh, for the levitating powers of Mirrikh! Bless me! but those were not half bad days at the musty old Nagkon  Wat. Would that they were back again. ”

But wishing could bring no change in our situation. Day after day while Walla and I watched by Maurice’s body  the Doctor watched the water at the mouth of the cave.

For eight days it continued to rise, until at last, instead of extending twenty feet back into the cave it reached more  than fifty. Very naturally we began to wonder if it would keep on rising and ultimately drown us out; but on the  ninth day, to my intense relief, it began to fall, and after  that kept on falling, until now it was below the entrance of  the passage through the granite wall on the other side of the  ravine, or canon, as I preferred to call it; we could still see  the water rushing madly when we wished, but it was necessary to lean out of the cave to do this, for our rocky  prison was now entirely dry.

Such was the situation on that morning when the Doctor called me to breakfast.

At my appearance Walla turned her share of the cooking over to Ah Schow and hastily retreated to take her place beside Maurice’s body. And in this connection I may as well say that my feelings toward the poor girl had long since  assumed proper shape. The love which I, in my ignorance, thought I felt for her, I knew now belonged to another; to a  being not of this world, whose very existence had become  to me but a beautiful dream.

Thus Walla, no longer annoyed by the consciousness that I was always watching her, came to be upon very good  terms with me; and although we spoke but seldom, we  thoroughly understood each other so far as Maurice was  concerned, and was not that enough?

There was nothing particularly remarkable about this day, except that it rained, and so long as the daylight lasted—it was precious little of it we saw—there was a steady drip  at the mouth of the cave.

We had fallen into a regular routine by this time. Padma gathered his lamas about him at stated hours, and so far as