"Yes. But don't risk anything. There's Miss Winton to think of."
"Oh, I can do it!" came in reply. "The rock's good enough."
Then a grim silence, long to the listener, broken only by the occasional patter of a stone loosened by Pressford, which came bounding down the gully.
Pressford was now out of sight of his fellow-climber, but in full view of Doris, who had followed the movements of each in turn, with mingled suspense and delight, counting the moments till she should be allowed to make her own essay.
Suspense, lest they should decide that the ascent was too hard for a beginner. That was all. She had no thought of fear; and nothing lay farther from her imagination than that either of her companions should come to grief. Two experienced climbers—one of them a practised mountaineer who had scaled without a guide some of the most hazardous peaks in Switzerland!—roped together, in a gully which she herself hoped to go up. The idea would have seemed preposterous.
But even a first-class mountaineer is never absolutely ensured against a slip,—still less against the perils of rotten rock.
She saw Pressford creep, worming himself along like a snake, over a slab of slanting rock, on which from where she stood no foothold could be detected. His right hand rose stealthily, inch by inch, till it appeared to be at its furthest stretch.
For two or three seconds the climber rested thus,—silent, immobile, as a black shadow on the rock. Suddenly there was a spasmodic effort. His hand clutched at a hold six inches beyond reach; and in this act the only firm foothold was perforce abandoned. His fingers closed convulsively on the rocky projection; and in another moment he would have drawn himself up to a safe position.
He gripped a shade more firmly. And—like the snapping of a rotten branch, overweighted with winter snow—the rock came away in his clutch.
One second he lay prone against the wall, clinging with every muscle of his sinewy frame; the only clear thought in his brain a wild regret that he had trusted to an untested hold.