Page:Edgar Huntly, or The Sleep Walker.djvu/207

 with ice, and acted upon my body like the points of a thousand needles. There was no remedy, and I mustered my patience to endure it.

I returned again to the brow of the hill: I ranged along it till I reached a place where the descent was perpendicular, and, in consequence of affording no sustenance to trees or bushes, was nearly smooth and bare. There was no road to be seen; and, this circumstance, added to the sounds which the rippling current produced, afforded me some knowledge of my situation.

The ledge, along which the road was conducted, disappeared near this spot: the opposite sides of the chasm through which flowed the river approached nearer to each other, in the form of jutting promontories. I now stood upon the verge of that on the northern side: the water flowed at the foot; but, for the space of ten or twelve feet from the rock, was so shallow, as to permit the traveller and his horse to wade through it, and thus to regain the road which the receding precipice had allowed to be continued on the further side.

I knew the nature and dimensions of this ford; I knew that at a few yards from the rock the channel was of great depth. To leap into it in this place was a less dangerous exploit than at the spot where I had formerly been tempted to leap; there I was unacquainted with the depth, but here I knew it to be considerable: still there was some ground of hesitation and fear; my present station was loftier, and how deeply I might sink into this gulf, how far the fall and the concussion would bereave me of my presence of mind, I could not determine. This hesitation vanished, and placing my tomahawk and fusee upon the ground, I prepared to leap.

This purpose was suspended in the moment of its execution, by a faint sound, heard from the quarter whence I had come: it was the warning of men, but had nothing in common with those which I had been accustomed to hear: it was not the howling of a wolf, or the yelling of a panther; these had often been overheard by night, during my last year's excursion to the lakes: my fears whispered that this was the vociferation of a savage.