The House on the Borderland | Page 4

went forward, the sound became plainer continually, showing
that we were heading straight towards it. Steadily, the roaring grew
louder and nearer, until it appeared, as I remarked to Tonnison, almost
to come from under our feet--and still we were surrounded by the trees
and shrubs.
"Take care!" Tonnison called to me. "Look where you're going." And
then, suddenly, we came out from among the trees, on to a great open
space, where, not six paces in front of us, yawned the mouth of a
tremendous chasm, from the depths of which, the noise appeared to rise,
along with the continuous, mist-like spray that we had witnessed from
the top of the distant bank.
For quite a minute we stood in silence, staring in bewilderment at the
sight; then my friend went forward cautiously to the edge of the abyss.
I followed, and, together, we looked down through a boil of spray at a
monster cataract of frothing water that burst, spouting, from the side of
the chasm, nearly a hundred feet below.
"Good Lord!" said Tonnison.
I was silent, and rather awed. The sight was so unexpectedly grand and
eerie; though this latter quality came more upon me later.
Presently, I looked up and across to the further side of the chasm. There,
I saw something towering up among the spray: it looked like a
fragment of a great ruin, and I touched Tonnison on the shoulder. He
glanced round, with a start, and I pointed towards the thing. His gaze
followed my finger, and his eyes lighted up with a sudden flash of
excitement, as the object came within his field of view.
"Come along," he shouted above the uproar. "We'll have a look at it.
There's something queer about this place; I feel it in my bones." And he
started off, round the edge of the crater-like abyss. As we neared this
new thing, I saw that I had not been mistaken in my first impression. It
was undoubtedly a portion of some ruined building; yet now I made out
that it was not built upon the edge of the chasm itself, as I had at first
supposed; but perched almost at the extreme end of a huge spur of rock

that jutted out some fifty or sixty feet over the abyss. In fact, the jagged
mass of ruin was literally suspended in mid-air.
Arriving opposite it, we walked out on to the projecting arm of rock,
and I must confess to having felt an intolerable sense of terror, as I
looked down from that dizzy perch into the unknown depths below
us--into the deeps from which there rose ever the thunder of the falling
water, and the shroud of rising spray.
Reaching the ruin, we clambered round it cautiously, and, on the
further side, came upon a mass of fallen stones and rubble. The ruin
itself seemed to me, as I proceeded now to examine it minutely, to be a
portion of the outer wall of some prodigious structure, it was so thick
and substantially built; yet what it was doing in such a position, I could
by no means conjecture. Where was the rest of the house, or castle, or
whatever there had been?
I went back to the outer side of the wall, and thence to the edge of the
chasm, leaving Tonnison rooting systematically among the heap of
stones and rubbish on the outer side. Then I commenced to examine the
surface of the ground, near the edge of the abyss, to see whether there
were not left other remnants of the building to which the fragment of
ruin evidently belonged. But, though I scrutinised the earth with the
greatest care, I could see no signs of anything to show that there had
ever been a building erected on the spot, and I grew more puzzled than
ever.
Then, I heard a cry from Tonnison; he was shouting my name,
excitedly, and, without delay, I hurried along the rocky promontory to
the ruin. I wondered whether he had hurt himself, and then the thought
came, that perhaps he had found something.
I reached the crumbled wall, and climbed round. There, I found
Tonnison standing within a small excavation that he had made among
the debris: he was brushing the dirt from something that looked like a
book, much crumpled and dilapidated; and opening his mouth, every
second or two, to bellow my name. As soon as he saw that I had come,
he handed his prize to me, telling me to put it into my satchel so as to

protect it from the damp, while he continued his explorations. This I
did, first, however, running the pages through my fingers, and noting
that they were closely filled with neat, old-fashioned writing which was
quite legible,