“You miserable little wretches,” he muttered; “be quiet! Well, it might be worse. I should have been in a sad pickle if the old birds had chosen this moment to attack me.”
He hung in the same position, with his chin resting on the ledge, as well as his hands, till the birds were quiet again, and then wondering whether Ralph Darley was still watching, he slowly let his muscles relax, and his body subside, till he hung at full stretch, seeking steadily the while for foot-hold, but finding none, and forced now to look down between his chest and the rock, to see how far the next ledge might be.
To his disgust, it was quite two feet lower, and it was forced upon him that unless he could climb back to the ledge upon which his hands were clasped, he must let himself drop to the resting-place below.
It was no time for hesitation, and condensing his energies upon what he knew to be a difficult task, he drew himself up by strong muscular contraction till his chin once more rested between his hands, and then grasped the bitter fact that to get up and stand upon the ledge was impossible; it was too narrow, and he could find no foot-hold to help.
Accepting the position, he let himself sink again to the full length of his arms, hung motionless for a few moments, and then, keeping himself perfectly rigid, allowed his fingers to glide over the stone, and dropped the two feet to the ledge below, perfectly upright and firm. In all probability he would have found hand-hold the next moment, but, scared anew by the rush through the air, the young ravens began to flap their wings violently, and that was sufficient to disturb the lad’s equilibrium. He made a desperate effort to recover it, but one foot gave way, and he fell, scraping the edge.
Another desperate effort, and he clung to the ledge for a brief moment or two, and then a yell arose from above, as he went down a few feet and felt what seemed a violent blow against his side. The next instant his hands had closed upon the tough stem of a stunted yew, and he was hanging there, hitched in the little branches, saved from falling farther, but unable to move from the fear of tearing the shrub from its root-hold in a crack of the cliff, where there was not a trace of anything else to which he could cling.