Just at this unfortunate crisis it had become exceedingly dark, and the heavy clouds fast gathering overhead promised another shower; which promise was fulfilled even more speedily than they anticipated, and down came the rain pouring away in hissing torrents upon our pedestrians, who, unable to regain the lost footpath, strolled on for some time without the remotest notion of the direction they ought to take. They were not, however, very long in finding that they had again gotten amongst the loose sandbanks, which, being dispersed around in steep undulating hillocks, were exceedingly fatiguing to traverse even by daylight; it is needless, then, to say how much this difficulty was increased when the traveller was involved in darkness, and at the same time ignorant of the direction he ought to pursue. Nor was this the worst evil to which our two wanderers were exposed. A considerable number of mines had been opened in these wastes, and though the working of them had been abandoned for several years, yet the shafts were still open, many of them wholly unprotected either by rail or embankment, and the aperture being even with the surface, and not wider than the mouth of an ordinary-sized well, no one could possibly discern his danger in a night so dark as it then was. A more fatal snare for entrapping a benighted traveller could scarcely have been devised. But neither Vernon nor Frank had the remotest suspicion of this danger; or, in fact, any fears beyond the dread of spending the night in this howling wilderness.
At last, to their great relief, the rain subsided, and the clouds breaking away disclosed the great bear and polar star, which afforded them an unerring point to steer by, and raised strong hopes that if the sky remained clear, and their legs would only hold out long enough against the excessive fatigue of scrambling over the steep hillocks, they might, by pursuing a perfectly straight course, at last get clear of this desert spot, and reach a better kind of country, where they might meet with some habitation or other that would at least afford them rest and shelter until daybreak.
Now, when matters have become very bad, any change for the better, however slight it be, imparts some cheering influence; and the relief our drenched pedestrians felt from the mere ceasing of the rain, and exchanging the dull lowering sky for the clear dark-blue starlight, proved enough to renovate their drooping hearts, and to excite them to make the best use they could of their limbs; so that by persevering they at last reached a part of the waste where the travelling became less irksome, the drifting sand having, in this particular part, formed itself into larger hills, which, in course of time, had become coated with short grass, and thus afforded very pleasant ground to walk over. But this relief from fatigue was attended with increased peril to the erring wanderers, who were now in the very midst of abandoned mines, whose shafts yawned around them in every direction, many of which they passed almost within a hair's-breadth of, unaware of the dangers that thus lay in their path, and only congratulating themselves on the improved state of the ground they had to walk over.