“Catch hold, Bob!” I cried, “and I’ll help you.”
“I can get up by myself, thank you,” he cried very haughtily, and he loosed his hold with one hand to strike mine aside.
It was a foolish act, for if I had not snatched at him he would have gone backwards, but this time he clung to me tightly, and the next minute was by my side.
“Oh, it’s easy enough,” he said, forgetting directly the ugly fall he had escaped.
“Here, now, you two lay hold of the rope and pull me up!” shouted Bigley. “I want to come too.”
We took hold of the rope and tightened it, and there was a severe course of tugging for a few minutes before we slackened our efforts, and sat down and laughed, for we might as well have tried to drag up any of the ton-weight stones as Bigley.
“Oh, I say,” he cried; “you don’t half pull. I want to come up.”
“Then you must climb as we pull,” I said, and in obedience to my advice he fastened the rope round his waist, and tried to climb as we hauled, with the result that after a few minutes’ scuffling and rasping on the rock poor Bigley was sitting down rubbing himself softly, and looking up at us with a very doleful expression of countenance.
“You can’t get up, Big; you’re too heavy,” cried Bob, who was now in the best of tempers. “Here, let’s look round, Sep.”
That did not take long, for there were only a few square feet of surface to traverse. We were up at the top, and could see a long way round; but then so we could fifteen or twenty feet below, and at the end of five minutes we both were of the same way of thinking—that the principal satisfaction in getting up to the summit of a rock or mountain was in being able to say that you had mastered a difficulty.