Page:Edgar Huntly, or The Sleep Walker.djvu/122

 the scope of my efforts was to consist in vanquishing his aversion to food; but these efforts would now be useless, since I had no power to supply his cravings.

This deficiency, however, was easily supplied; I had only to return home, and supply myself anew. No time was to be lost in doing this; but I was willing to remain under this shelter till the fury of the tempest had subsided: besides, I was not certain that Clithero had again retreated hither; it was requisite to explore the summit of this hill, and ascertain whether it had any inhabitant: I might likewise discover what had been the success of my former experiment, and whether the food which had been left here on the foregoing day, was consumed or neglected.

While occupied with these reflections, my eyes were fixed upon the opposite steeps: the tops of the trees, waving to and fro in the wildest commotion, and their trunks occasionally bending to the blast, which in these lofty regions blew with a violence unknown in the tracts below, exhibited an awful spectacle. At length my attention was attracted by the trunk which lay across the gulf, and which I had converted into a bridge: I perceived that it had already somewhat swerved from its original position, that every blast broke or loosened some of the fibres by which its root was connected with the opposite bank, and that, if the storm did not speedily abate, there was imminent danger of its being torn from the rock, and precipitated into the chasm; thus my retreat would be cut off, and the evils from which I was endeavouring to rescue another would be experienced by myself.

I did not just then reflect that Clithero had found access to this hill by other means, and that the avenue by which he came would be equally commodious to me; I believed my destiny to hang upon the expedition with which I should recr0ss this gulf. The moments that were spent in these deliberations were critical, and I shuddered to observe that the trunk was held in its place by one or two fibres which were already stretched almost to breaking.

To pass along the trunk, rendered slippery by the wet, and unsteadfast by the wind, was eminently dangerous. To maintain my hold in passing, in defiance of the