“If this rain holds on much longer it will be a bad job for Murdock. There is every fear that if the bog should break under the flooding he will suffer at once. What an obstinate fool he is! he won’t take any warning. I almost feel like a criminal in letting him go to his death, ruffian though he is; and yet what can one do? We are all powerless if anything should happen.”
After this he was silent. I spoke the next:
“Tell me, Dick, is there any earthly possibility of any harm coming to Joyce’s house in case the bog should shift again? Is it quite certain that they are all safe?”
“Quite certain, old fellow. You may set your mind at rest on that score. In so far as the bog is concerned, she and her father are in no danger. The only way they could run any risk of danger would be by their going to Murdock’s house, or by being by chance lower down on the Hill, and I do not think that such a thing is likely to happen.”
This set my mind more at ease, and while Dick sat down to write some letters I continued to look at the rain.
By-and-by I went down to the tap-room, where there were always a lot of peasants, whose quaint speech amused and interested me. When I came in one of them, whom I recognised as one of our navvies at Knocknacar, was telling something, for the others all stood round him. Andy was the first to see me, and said, as I entered:
“Ye’ll have to go over it all agin, Mike. Here’s his ‘an’r, that is just death on to bogs — an’ the like,” he added, looking at me slyly.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Oh, not much, yer ‘an’r, except that the bog up at Knocknacar has run away intirely. Whin the wather rose in it, the big cuttin’ we med tuk it all out, like butthermilk out iv a jug. Begor, there never was seen such a flittin’ since the wurrld begun! An’, more betoken, the quare part iv it is that it hasn’t left the bit iv a hole behind it at all, but it’s all mud an’ wather at the prisint minit.”
I knew this would interest Dick exceedingly, so I went for him. When he heard it he got quite excited, and insisted that we should go off to Knocknacar at once. Accordingly Andy was summoned, the mare was harnessed, and, with what protection we could get in the way of wraps, we went off to Knocknacar through the rain-storm.
As we went along we got some idea of the damage done, and being done, by the wonderful rainfall. Not only the road was like a river, and the mountain streams were roaring torrents, but in places the road was flooded to such a dangerous depth that we dared not have attempted the passage only that, through our repeated journeys, we all knew the road so well.
However, we got at last to Knocknacar, and there found that the statement we heard was quite true. The bog had been flooded to such a degree that it had burst out through the cutting which we had made, and had poured in a great stream over all the sloping moorland on which we had opened it. The brown bog and black mud lying all over the stony space looked like one of the lava streams which mark the northern side of Vesuvius. Dick went most carefully all over the ground wherever we could venture, and took quite a number of notes. Indeed, the day was beginning to draw in when, dripping and chilled, we prepared for our return journey through the rain. Andy had not been wasting his time in the sheebeen, and was in one of his most jocular humors; and when we, too, were fortified with steaming hot punch, we were able to listen to his fun without wanting to kill him.
On the journey back, Dick, when Andy allowed him speech, explained to me the various phenomena which we had noticed. When we got back to the hotel it was night. Had the weather been fine we might have expected a couple more hours of twilight; but with the mass of driving clouds overhead, and the steady downpour of rain, and the fierce rush of the wind, there was left to us not the slightest suggestion of day.
We went to bed early, for I had to rise by daylight for our journey on the morrow. After lying awake for some time listening to the roar of the storm and the dash of the rain, and wondering if it were to go on forever, I sank into a troubled sleep.
It seemed to me that all the nightmares which had individually afflicted me during the last week returned to assail me collectively on the present occasion. I was a sort of Mazeppa in the world of dreams. Again and again the fatal Hill and all its mystic and terrible associations haunted me; again the snakes writhed around and took terrible forms; again she I loved was in peril; again Murdock seemed to arise in new forms of terror and wickedness; again the lost treasure was sought under terrible conditions; and once again I seemed to sit on the table rock with Norah, and to see the whole mountain rush down on us in a dread avalanche, and turn to myriad snakes as it came; and again Norah seemed to call to me, “Help! help! Arthur, save me! save me!” And again, as was most natural, I found myself awake on the floor of my room — though this time I did not scream — wet and quivering with some nameless terror, and with Norah’s despairing cry in my ears.
But even in the first instant of my awakening I had taken a resolution which forthwith I proceeded to carry into effect. These terrible dreams, whencesoever they came, must not have come in vain; the grim warning must not be despised. Norah was in danger, and I must go to her at all hazards.
I threw on my clothes and went and woke Dick. When I told him my intention he jumped up at once and began to dress, while I ran down-stairs and found Andy, and set him to get out the car at once.
“Is it goin’ out agin in the shtorm ye are? Begor, ye’d not go widout some rayson, an’ I’m not the bhoy to be behind whin ye want me. I’ll be ready, yer ‘an’r, in two skips iv a dead salmon;” and Andy proceeded to make, or rather complete, his toilet, and hurried out to the stable to get the car ready.
In the mean time Dick had got two lanterns and a flask, and showed them to me.
“We may as well have them with us. We do not know what we may want in this storm.”
It was now past one o’clock, and the night was pitchy dark. The rain still fell, and high overhead we could hear the ceaseless rushing of the wind. It was a lucky thing that both Andy and the mare knew the road thoroughly, for otherwise we never could have got on that night. As it was, we had to go much more slowly than we had ever gone before.
I was in a perfect fever. Every second’s delay seemed to me like an hour. I feared — nay more, I had a deep conviction — that some dreadful thing was happening, and I had over me a terrible dread that we should arrive too late.
Chapter 17 — The Catastrophe
As we drew closer to the mountain, and recognised our whereabouts by the various landmarks, my dread seemed to grow. The night was now well on, and there were signs of the storm abating; occasionally the wind would fall off a little, and the rain beat with less dreadful violence. In such moments some kind of light would be seen in the sky — or, to speak more correctly, the darkness would be less complete — and then the new squall which followed would seem by contrast with the calm to smite us with renewed violence. In one of these lulls we saw for an instant the mountain rise before us, its bold outline being shown darkly against a sky less black. But the vision was swept away an instant after by a squall and a cloud of blinding rain, leaving only a dreadful memory of some field for grim disaster. Then we went on our way even more hopelessly; for earth and sky, which in that brief instant we had been able to distinguish, were now hidden under one unutterable pall of gloom.
On we went slowly. There was now in the air a thunderous feeling, and we expected each moment to be startled by the lightning’s flash