In vain they called out to him that he was perfectly safe—that if Miss Wyatt could get along the place without any difficulty surely he could. The poor man’s reasoning faculties seemed to have deserted him altogether.
“I suppose I must go back and salvage him!” said Wentworth, resignedly. “You had better wait here for me, though.” And in a moment he was beside the distressed chaplain.
“Hang it all, Mr Scott!” he said in an undertone, “do remember what an exhibition you are making of yourself before Miss Wyatt, and pull yourself together. You’re quite safe, I tell you. Now, turn round—carefully as you like—and then crawl back again as you came.”
When a man of Scott’s calibre is in a horrible funk, poised a thousand feet in mid-air, appeals to his reason or his sense of shame are apt to fall alike on deaf ears. To all Wentworth’s adjurations he only reiterated piteously, “I can’t move! What is to be done? I can’t move!”
What, indeed, was to be done? It was a position in which if a man will not help himself nobody can help him. Wentworth was in despair. Suddenly a happy thought struck him. His flask!
“Here, take a nip of this and pull yourself together. That’s right,” as Scott eagerly seized the proffered refreshment.
And soon the effects were felt. A liberal gulp or two having infused into his system a faint modicum of that artificial courage libellously termed “Dutch,” the panic-stricken cleric managed to turn round upon his aërial perch, and began to crawl gingerly back in the same ignominious posture as that in which he had come, stipulating eagerly that his succourer should keep just behind him in order to grab hold of him if he should show the least sign of falling. Wentworth was glad to get rid of him on any terms, and, depositing him in safety under a rock, solemnly enjoined upon him not to move therefrom until they should return.
“Well, Mr Fordham,” said Alma, wickedly, “we poor women are not always the ones who give the most trouble, you see.”
“No, by Jove, you’re not, Miss Wyatt,” struck in Gedge, characteristically eager to answer for everybody. “What an awful fool I must have looked myself. I’ll do the next arête on my hind legs like the rest of you.” And he was as good as his word.
Two more of these narrow rock-ridges, overhanging a dizzy height, then a particularly awkward “corner” where a very slight excrescence of the rock constituted the only foothold, and where Wentworth and Philip’s combined caution availed to render the danger for Alma practically nil, and they began the steep but easy climb of the grassy cone itself. A few minutes later they stood on the summit.