Outlaw and Lawmaker/Chapter 32
CHAPTER XXXII.
"THE ROCK OF THE HUMAN HEAD."
Elsie turned away from the married and forbidden lovers with a little shiver of disgust, and she and Trant, unnoticed by the other two, strolled presently out of the gorge. The turn of a rocky screen put them out of sight. They stood presently in front of the precipice, and apparently further progress seemed barred. "Well?" she said.
Trant pointed with a staff he had cut from a stout gum-sapling to a hole just above her head half covered with hoya creepers. It looked, only that it was too large, like the hole of a wallaby or native bear. He swung himself up to it. "I could take you another way," he said, "but this will save time." In a moment he had disappeared within the hole, which she now saw was even larger than it had seemed, and must have a drop within. The upper part of his body showed and his arm and the staff, which he stretched down.
"Do you think you could put your foot in that little cleft?" he said. "You will find it much easier than it looks; then take my hand and I will lift you here."
She did as he bade her. The girl liked mystery, and her face was flushed with interest. In a few moments she found herself walking on a higher level within the rampart of the rock in a kind of corridor, with the sky far overhead. "Oh, how extraordinary!" she cried.
He repeated his caution against snakes, and made her lift her habit and show him her boots and gaiters, which he declared stout enough almost to defy a serpent's fangs. The corridor dipped down every now and then, and was sufficiently rough walking for her frequently to require his helping hand. Once when it was withdrawn for him to cut away a prickly creeper that the late heavy rains had evidently detached from the outer rock she stumbled and fell, and in doing so hit her knee against a hard object, which she picked up. To her astonishment it was a horse's shoe.
"How could this possibly have got here?" she cried. "It is not conceivable that a horse could have climbed that wall and come in by the hole."
"The hole is big enough," said Trant, with his queer laugh, "and trained horses have been known to do more extraordinary feats even than that. The wall isn't really so steep as it looks. But," he added hastily, "it is far more likely that there has been a stockman here at some time—Sam Shehan, who threw the shoe against the rock and struck our hole with it probably, for I am quite of Mr. Frank Hallett's opinion," added Trant with candour, "that in the days before his reformation, Sam Shehan did a little cattle-duffing business and made use of this place, which is out of the way, and yet close at hand, as a plant."
"Mr. Trant," exclaimed Elsie, "does it not strike you that this is just the kind of place Moonlight might choose to hide in?"
"If it were," said Trant grimly, "I should have been a richer man by the £8,000 reward which a liberal Leichardt's Land Government offer for his capture, to say nothing of Lord Waveryng's £2,000. And if I had not chosen to avail myself of the opportunity, Sam Shehan would certainly have done so. We explored this spot thoroughly when Captain Macpherson was at the Gorge. Very likely the shoe was pitched over the wall then."
They emerged from the passage, which gave out upon an open ledge, and which, as they saw, skirted the quicksand. Descending sheer from the ledge was a precipice lapped by a long deep black lagoon, into which the sands shelved. The ledge, though fairly wide, would have been hardly perceivable from the opposite side of the watercourse. While in the passage they had been steadily mounting upward, and now, Elsie saw, were about half the height of the lower crater peak. And then as they turned a rounded corner she came, still mounting, suddenly in sight of the legendary Baròlin rock.
Yes, it was exactly as King Tommy of Yoolaman had described it—a great black bluff boulder, fashioned by Nature into the rude semblance of a human head, the back part of which, being somewhat corrugated and affording a deposit ground for drift and windblown particles, had become overgrown with grey hanging lichen that in the distance gave the appearance of an old man's hair. Strangely solemn and impressive did this rough-hewn image seem, set in this desolate grandeur of mountain and scrub. They were within a few yards of the rock. Here the ledge widened out into a sort of plateau, where grew some dark green shrubs with a strong scented yellow flower which she did not know, and a quantity of the sage green aromatic plant that abounded at Point Row. Out of the precipice behind waved a profusion of feathery rock-lilies, and there were many other flowers and plants making the spot a mass of colour and bloom. She noticed now for the first time— perhaps because it cut the vegetation—that there was a distinct track leading right up to the rock. Trant remarked the direction of her eyes. "That must have been made by the Blacks on their way to the sacred ceremony. Would you like to see a Bora ground, Miss Valliant? There's a sort of cave behind that rock."
Elsie followed him, excited by the adventure. The rock of the human head stood out from the mountain behind it. Between it and the precipice was a shadowy space, and here the wall scooped inward. Trant put out his hand and took Elsie's. "Take care, it is dark, and you may stumble."
She suffered herself to be guided along what seemed a narrow gallery. Presently she knew that they were in a cave, and as they moved gropingly on, she felt by the rush of air, and a certain sense of space and dryness, that the cave was a large one. And then a sudden feeling of terror overcame her. Anything might happen to her here. How had she been so mad as to trust herself in this lonely place with Dominic Trant?
"I don't like it," she exclaimed, nervously. "Mr. Trant, I feel frightened. I should like to get back to the others. Take me out of this."
"In a few moments. It is the darkness that frightens you. There is light when we come to the Bora ground; and it is really worth your while to see it."
"I don't care to see the Bora ground," she answered. "I hate this darkness. Please take me back to the others."
"If you will wait a moment I will light a match," he said, "and then you will see where we are, and will not be frightened any longer."
He released her hand, and she fancied that she heard him fumbling. It was so dim that she could only just see his form. Then he seemed to move behind her.
"What are you doing?" she said, sharply.
"There is a draught. I want to get into the shelter of the rock," he replied.
Elsie waited for the light. It never came. Suddenly she became aware of an odd sickly odour, and at the same instant something was thrown over her face—something wet and suffocating. She struggled, became dizzy with a strange singing in her ears. And then she knew no more.