cliffs at a leap and rushed from sight.

We stood upon a little platform of coarse grass and bramble, whose fringe
dipped and nodded fitfully as the sprinkle caught it. Beyond, the sliding
sheet of water looked like a great strap of steel, reeled ceaselessly off
a whirling drum pivoted between the hills. The midday sun shot like a
piston down the shaft of the valley, painting purple spears and angles
behind its abutting rocks, and hitting full upon the upper curve of the
fall; but half-way down the cataract slipped into shadow.

My brain sickened with the endless gliding and turmoil of descent, and I
turned aside to speak to my companion. He was kneeling upon the grass,
his eyes fixed and staring, his white lips mumbling some crippled memory
of a prayer. He started and cowered down as I touched him on the
shoulder.

"I cannot go, Monsieur; I shall die!"

"What next, Camille? I will go alone,"

"My God, Monsieur! the cave under the fall! It is there the horror is."

He pointed to a little gap in the fringing bushes with shaking finger.
I stole gingerly in the direction he indicated. With every step I
took the awful fascination of the descending water increased upon
me. It seemed hideous and abnormal to stand mid-way against a
perpendicularly-rushing torrent. Above or below the effect would have
been different; but here, to look up was to feel one's feet dragging
towards the unseen--to look down and pass from vision of the lip of the
fall was to become the waif of a force that was unaccountable.