So he loaded the old shot-gun. It belched forth fire and smoke into
space. And the thunder of his shot went rolling off in a reverberating
din among the mountain echoes, until a hundred tongues repeated his
appeal for help. Again he loaded rapidly and fired. And yet again, with
nervous, eager fingers. So on, till he had let off half a dozen shots in
quick succession.
Then he waited, listening as if every pulse in his body had suddenly
become an ear.
But when the last growling echo had died away, not a sound broke the
almost absolute silence on the mountain-side. Evidently not a human soul
was near enough to hear or understand his signals of distress.
In these bitter minutes some sensations ran through Dol Farrar which he
had never known before; and, as he afterwards expressed it, "they were
enough to cover any fellow with goose-flesh."
He felt that he had reached the dreariest point of the unknown, and was
a lonely, drifting atom in this immense solitude of forest and rock.
Never in his life before or afterwards did he come so near to Point
Despair as when he stumbled down the mountain, spurning that treacherous
trail, and going wherever his jaded feet found travelling tolerably
easy.
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