Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/420

 gazed at the masses of water plunging sheer down the face of the rock, I realized with a shock how closely I and my fellows had looked into the eyes of death so short a while before, and how unthinkingly, how light-heartedly we had seampered to the very brink of destruction while half intoxicated by the fierce joy of living.

I sent Saleh back for my fellows, and sat down where I was to await their coming. I wanted a ciga- rette to aid my meditations upon man's precarious tenure of life; but the river had rendered tobacco and matches alike useless.

The insistent roar of the rapids filled my hearing; the wild beauty of the scene held me spellbound; but most of all was I impressed by the insolent free- dom, the vigour, the complete, unrestrained savagery of the river. IIere was a stream which for countless ages had leaped and thundered down this granite- bound pass, had slain innumerable living things in its day with the callous cruelty of the mighty, and had never known an instant's restraint, a moment's check, a second's curbing or binding. As the stream below me tossed its white mane of spray restlessly to and fro, it seemed to me to be in truth some wild monster escaped from a primeval world, charging down this rock-pent defile, instinct with life and liberty. The very roaring of those resistless waters seemed to me a shout of triumph wherewith they boasted of their freedom; their furious commotion mocked aloud at the restraints of nature and of man. It was the embodiment of unfettered power, this