Adrift in Pacific and Other Great Adventures – 17 Titles in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). Jules Verne
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Deck and the doctor went along the right bank of the Nyad for a few hundred yards. Had they followed the road which winds through the valleys, they would have gone too far to the westward. It was a pity they could not follow the river and thereby reduce their distance by a third, for the Nyad rises in the folds of the Orgall plateau. But though it was practicable at first, the bank became eventually so deeply cut into by ravines and barred with rocks that progress along it was impossible even to pedestrians. They had therefore to bear away obliquely to the left, so as to return to the castle after traversing the lower belt of the Plesa forests.
And this was the only side on which the castle was approachable from where they were. When it had been inhabited by Count Rodolphe de Gortz, the communication between the village of Werst, the Vulkan Hill, and the valley of the Syl had been through a gap which had been opened in this direction. But abandoned for twenty years to the invasions of vegetation, it had become obstructed by an inextricable thicket of underwood, and the trace of a footpath or a passage would be sought for in vain.
When they left the deep bed of the Nyad, which was filled with roaring water, Nic Deck stopped to take his bearings. The castle was no longer visible. It would only appear again beyond the curtain of forests which stood in rows one above the other on the lower slopes of the mountain, an arrangement common to the whole orographic system of the Carpathians. As there was no landmark the direction was not easily made out. It could only be arrived at from the position of the sun, whose rays were lighting up the distant crests in the south-west.
“You see, forester,” said the doctor, “you see there is not even a road, or, rather, no more road.”
“There will be one,” said Nic Deck.
“That is easy to say, Nic.”
“And easy to do, Patak.”
“You are resolved, then?”
The forester was content to reply by an affirmative gesture, and started off towards the trees.
The doctor had a strong inclination to retrace his steps, but his companion, happening to turn round, gave him such a determined look that he thought it better not to remain behind.
Doctor Patak then conceived another hope: Nic Deck might get lost amid this labyrinth of woods, where his duties had not yet called him. But he reckoned without that marvellous scent, that professional instinct, that animal aptitude, so to speak, which takes notice of the least indications, projections of branches in such and such directions, irregularities of the ground, colours of the bark, hues of the mosses as they are exposed to different winds. Nic Deck was a perfect master of his trade, and practised it with too much sagacity to go astray even in localities unknown to him. He was worthy to be ranked with Leatherstocking or Chingachgook in the land of Cooper.
But the crossing of this zone of trees was not free from real difficulties. Elms, beeches, a few of those maples known as false planes, mighty oaks, occupied the first line up to the line of the birches, pines, and spruces, massed on the higher shoulders of the col to the left. Magnificent were these trees with their powerful stems, their boughs warm with the new sap, their thick leafage intermingling to form a roof of verdure which the sun’s rays could not pierce.
By stooping beneath their lower branches a passage was relatively easy; but many were the obstacles on the surface of the ground, and much work was needed to clear them away, to get through the nettles and briars, to avoid the thousands of thorns that clung to them at the least touch. Nic Deck was not a man to become anxious about these matters; and, providing he got through the wood, he did not worry himself about a few scratches. The advance, however, under such conditions was necessarily slow, and that was regrettable, for Nic Deck and Doctor Patak wished to reach the castle in the afternoon, in order that they might return to Werst before night.
Hatchet in hand, the forester worked at clearing a passage through these thick thorn-bushes, bristling with vegetable bayonets, in which the foot met a rugged soil, hummocky, broken, with roots or stumps to stumble over when it did not sink in a swampy bed of dead leaves which the wind had never swept away. Myriads of pods shot off like fulminating peas to the great alarm of the doctor, who started back at the crackle, and came again when some twig would catch on to his vest like a claw that wished to keep him. No! poor man, he was not at all comfortable. But now he dared not return alone, and he had to make an effort to keep up with his intractable companion.
Occasionally capricious clearings appeared in the forest. A shower of light would penetrate it. A couple of black storks, disturbed in their solitude, escaped from the higher branches and flew off with powerful strokes of the wing. The crossing of these clearings made the advance still more fatiguing. In them were piled up enormous masses of trees blown down by the storm or fallen from old age, as if the axe of the wood man had given them their death-stroke. There lay enormous trunks eaten into with decay, which no tool would ever cut into billets, and no wagon would ever carry to the bed of the Wallachian Syl. Faced by these obstacles, which were difficult to clear and at times impossible to turn, Nic Deck and his companion had no easy time of it. If the young forester, active, supple, vigorous, managed well, the doctor with his short legs, his large corporation, breathless and exhausted, could not save himself from occasional falls, and Nic had to come to his assistance.
“You will see, Nic, that I shall end by breaking one of my limbs!” he said.
“You will soon patch it up, if you do.”
“Come, forester, be reasonable; we need not strive against the impossible!”
But Nic Deck was already on in front, and the doctor, obtaining no reply, hastened to rejoin him.
Were they in the right direction to come out in front of the castle? They would have been puzzled to prove it. But as the ground was on the rise all the time, they must be reaching the edge of the forest; and they arrived there at three o’clock in the afternoon.
Beyond, up to the plateau of Orgall extended the curtain of green trees, much more scattered the farther they were up the mountain.
The Nyad appeared among the rocks, either because it had curved to the north-west, or because Nic Deck had struck off obliquely towards it. The young forester was thus assured he had made a good course, for the brook took its rise in the Orgall plateau.
Nic Deck could not refuse the doctor an hour’s rest on the bank of the torrent. Besides, the stomach claimed its due as well as the limbs. The wallets were well furnished; rakiou filled the doctor’s flask as well as Nic’s. Besides, water, fresh and limpid, filtered amid the pebbles below, and flowed a few paces off. What more could they desire? They had lost much; they must repair the loss.
Since their departure the doctor had scarcely had the leisure to talk with Nic Deck, who had been in front of him all the time. But he made up for lost time when they were seated on the bank of the Nyad. If one was not talkative, the other fully made up for it; and we need not be astonished if the questions were prolix and the answers brief.
“Let us talk a little, forester, and talk seriously,” said the doctor.
“I am listening to you,” replied Nic Deck.
“I think we halted here to recover our strength?”
“Nothing could be more correct.”
“Before returning to Werst?”
“No; before going to the castle.”
“But, Nic, we have been walking for six hours, and we are hardly halfway.”
“That shows we have no time to lose.”
“But we shall not reach the castle before night, and as I imagine, forester, you will not be mad enough to run any risks until you have had a clear view of it, we shall have to wait for day light.”
“We will wait for daylight.”
“And so you will not