reaction of the frost. This effect Bertram
experienced: a pleasant sensation began to steal over him; one limb
began to stiffen after another; and his vital powers had no longer
energy enough to resist the seductive approaches of sleep. At this
moment an accident saved him. The whole troop pulled up abruptly; and
at the same instant a piercing cry for help, and a violent trampling of
horses' hoofs, roused Bertram from his stupefaction.

The accident was this: a trooper had diverged from the line of road,
and was in the act of driving his horse over a precipice which overhung
the sea-coast just at the very moment when his error was betrayed
to him by the moving lights below. The horse however clung by his
fore-feet, which had fortunately been rough-shod, to a tablet of
slanting rock glazed over with an enamel of ice; and his comrades came
up in time to save both the trooper and his horse. Meantime the harsh
and sudden shock of this abrupt halt, together with the appalling character
of the incident which led to it, had roused Bertram; and he was still
further roused by the joyful prospect of a near termination to his
journey as well as by the remarkable features of the road on which his
eyes now opened from his brief slumber.

The road, as he now became aware, wound upwards along the extreme edge
of the rocky barrier which rose abruptly from the sea-coast. In the
murky depths below he saw nothing but lights tossing up and down,
gleaming at intervals, and then buried in sudden darkness--the lights
probably of vessels driving before wind and weather in a heavy sea. The
storm was now in its strength on the sea-quarter. The clouds had parted
before the wind; and a pale gleam of the moon suddenly betrayed to the
prisoner the spectacle of a billowy sea below him, an iron barrier of
rocky coast, and at some distance above him the gothic towers and
turrets of an old castle running out as it were over the sea itself
upon one of the bold prominences of the cliffs. The sharp lines of this
aerial pile of building were strongly relieved upon the sky which now
began to be overspread with moonlight. To this castle their route was
obviously directed. But danger still threatened them: the road was
narrow and steep; the wind blustered; and gusty squalls at intervals
threatened to upset both horse and rider into the abyss. However the
well-trained horses overcame all difficulties; at length the head of
the troop reached the castle; and th