She was in terror lest her fingers should relax their hold, in spite of her will. She lost count of time, and began to feel as if she had lain for ages between earth and sky.
Her left arm was getting numb, and her brain dizzy; she was dreadfully afraid of losing consciousness, and tried hard to keep possession of "herself," knowing that if she fainted she would slip down at once, and the green water would roll her over and draw her back.
"Like a cat with a mouse," thought Meg. Her reflections were getting indistinct, and she gathered her strength together to scream once more. A horror of losing her identity, of being swamped in a "black nothingness," was strong on her.
"Help me!" she cried, with an effort to make the words articulate, that was followed by a vague recollection that she had asked some one to "help her" once before, but he never did or never could.
She couldn't quite remember how it was: her past life seemed to have got far away, to have dropped off her, leaving her soul all alone, face to face with this black empty space that was trying to engulf it.
"There isn't any help," she said to herself. "It's all really like the sea, or cats and mice, and my fingers don't seem to belong to me any more," and then——
"Hold on!" said a voice above her. "Don't move, I'll run for a rope."
She opened her eyes and tried to collect her wits.
"I can't hold on more than a minute more," she said a little indistinctly. "If you go I shall fall." While she spoke the root she was clinging to "gave" a little, and a light shower of chalk fell on her face.
"I'm falling! oh be quick!" she cried; and the next moment something blue dangled above her face.