FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135  
136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   >>   >|  
d he squeezed his portly person out between the flapping boards. "All the same, I shall be glad to see him again," Jones declared, with an anxious frown upon his usually _nonchalant_ countenance; and the two men started briskly down the hill in pursuit of "the team." Meanwhile, Mr. Fetherbee was making his way slowly and cautiously down the rope. It was a good stout one and he had no real misgivings. Yet the situation was unusual enough to have a piquant flavor. In the first place the darkness was more than inky in character, the kind of blackness in comparison with which the blackest night seems luminous. Then there was the peculiar quality of the air, so different from anything above ground, that the words chill, and dampness, had no special relation to it. In the strange, tomb-like silence, his own breath, his own movements, waked a ghostly, whispering echo which was extremely weird and suggestive. Mr. Fetherbee was enchanted. He felt that he was getting down into the mysterious heart of things; that he was having something which came within an ace of being an adventure. Then, as he felt his way down, farther and farther below the vain surface of things, that intervening ace vanished, and he came up against his adventure with a suddenness that sent a knife-like thrill to his heart. His foot had lost its hold of the rope; he was hanging by his hands only. Startled into what he condemned as an unreasoning agitation, he began describing a circle with his leg, searching for the lost rope. It must be there, of course; why, of course it must! He had certainly not gone more than fifty or sixty feet, and they had said something about three hundred feet? Where could the rope be? It must have got caught somehow on his coat! Or perhaps his right leg was getting numb and he could not feel anything with it. But no! His leg was all right. He felt out with his left leg. It did not even touch the wall of the shaft. There seemed to be nothing there, nothing at all! Nothing there? Nothing in all the universe, but this bit of rope he was clutching, and himself, a miserable little lump of quivering, straining nerves. Mr. Fetherbee told himself that this would never do. He loosed the grip of his left hand, and it felt its way slowly down the rope gathering it up inch by inch. He knew by the lightness of the rope that the end was there, yet when he touched it a shiver went through him. A second later the left hand was clutching the
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135  
136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
Fetherbee
 

things

 

adventure

 
clutching
 

Nothing

 

farther

 

slowly

 

anxious

 

hundred

 

caught


describing

 
circle
 

agitation

 
unreasoning
 
Startled
 

condemned

 

searching

 

nonchalant

 

countenance

 

gathering


loosed

 

lightness

 

shiver

 

touched

 

nerves

 
declared
 

universe

 

quivering

 

straining

 

miserable


person

 

ground

 
squeezed
 

quality

 

silence

 

strange

 

dampness

 

special

 

relation

 

peculiar


portly
 
darkness
 

situation

 

piquant

 

flavor

 
unusual
 

character

 
luminous
 
blackest
 

blackness