I was in
fairyland between the dark wall and the wild throng of illumined waters,
but suffered sudden disenchantment; for, like the witch-scene in Alloway
Kirk, "in an instant all was dark." Down came a dash of spent comets,
thin and harmless-looking in the distance, but they felt desperately
solid and stony when they struck my shoulders, like a mixture of choking
spray and gravel and big hailstones. Instinctively dropping on my knees,
I gripped an angle of the rock, curled up like a young fern frond with
my face pressed against my breast, and in this attitude submitted as
best I could to my thundering bath. The heavier masses seemed to strike
like cobblestones, and there was a confused noise of many waters about
my ears--hissing, gurgling, clashing sounds that were not heard as
music. The situation was quickly realized. How fast one's thoughts burn
in such times of stress! I was weighing chances of escape. Would the
column be swayed a few inches away from the wall, or would it come yet
closer? The fall was in flood and not so lightly would its ponderous
mass be swayed. My fate seemed to depend on a breath of the "idle wind."
It was moved gently forward, the pounding ceased, and I was once more
visited by glimpses of the moon. But fearing I might be caught at a
disadvantage in making too hasty a retreat, I moved only a few feet
along the bench to where a block of ice lay.
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