“God bless you, my lad,” he cried, “but I cannot let you go.”
Cyril hardly heard a word in the midst of that deep-toned, booming thunder, but he grasped their import, and stood firm.
“Yes,” he shouted. “I’m light. Lower me down.”
A curious sensation attacked him as he spoke, and he knew that he was turning pale, but he faced in the direction of the gulf, and tried hard to pull himself together.
“Perry would have gone down after me,” he said to himself, “and it isn’t so very dangerous after all.”
But all the while he knew that it was, and also that it was a task calling for nerve, determination, and strength, all three of which he seemed to be wanting in when face to face with the dense, wreathing mist of that terrible gulf.
“I don’t care. I’m afraid, horribly afraid,” he muttered between his teeth. “But I’ll go. I’d go if it was twice as dangerous, if it’s only to let father know I’m not all bad.”
Meanwhile, a short discussion, painfully hard, went on between the colonel and John Manning, the former hesitating, the latter insisting.
“He’s light, and can do it better than you. Perhaps we couldn’t pull you up, nor you me.”
Then the colonel held out his hand to Cyril, who grasped it eagerly, but in an instant the colonel’s face began to work, and he drew the lad to his breast, held him there for a brief moment, and then released him.