, and straight, and shining. The water neither ran nor fell,
nor leaped with any spouting, but made one even slope of it, as if it
had been combed or planed, and looking like a plank of deal laid down a
deep black staircase. However, there was no side-rail, nor any place to
walk upon, only the channel a fathom wide, and the perpendicular walls
of crag shutting out the evening.

[Illustration: 058.jpg A long pale slide of water]

The look of this place had a sad effect, scaring me very greatly, and
making me feel that I would give something only to be at home again,
with Annie cooking my supper, and our dog Watch sniffing upward. But
nothing would come of wishing; that I had long found out; and it only
made one the less inclined to work without white feather. So I laid the
case before me in a little council; not for loss of time, but only that
I wanted rest, and to see things truly.

Then says I to myself--"John Ridd, these trees, and pools, and lonesome
rocks, and setting of the sunlight are making a gruesome coward of thee.
Shall I go back to my mother so, and be called her fearless boy?"

Nevertheless, I am free to own that it was not any fine sense of shame
which settled my decision; for indeed there was nearly as much of danger
in going back as in going on, and perhaps even more of labour, the
journey being so roundabout. But that which saved me from turning back
was a strange inquisitive desire, very unbecoming in a boy of little
years; in a word, I would risk a great deal to know what made the water
come down like that, and what there was at the top of it.

Therefore, seeing hard strife before me, I girt up my breeches anew,
with each buckle one hole tighter, for the sodden straps were stretching
and giving, and mayhap my legs were grown smaller from the coldness
of it. Then I bestowed my fish around my neck more tightly, and not
stopping to look much, for fear of fear, crawled along over the fork of
rocks, where the water had scooped the stone out, and shunning thus the
ledge from whence it rose like the mane of a white horse into the broad
black pool, softly I let my feet into the dip and rush of the torrent.

And here I had reckoned without my host, although (as I thought) so
clever; and it was much but that I went down into the great black pool,
and had never been heard of more; and this must have been the end of me,
except for my trusty loach-fork. For the green wave came down like great
bottles upon me,