The lad turned his head very slowly till he could look down, and fixed his eyes upon his companion in a peculiar, wild way.
“What’s the matter?—Giddy?”
“No.”
“Come down, then.”
“I—can’t,” said the boy slowly.
“Then climb on a little farther, and come down there.”
“No: I can’t move.”
“Nonsense. This isn’t a loadstone mountain, and you’re not iron. Come down.”
“I—I did try,” said Saxe; “but I had to make a jump to get here, and I can’t jump back: there’s nothing to take hold of.”
Dale scanned the position anxiously, seeing now for the first time that the rough angles and ridge-like pieces of rock along which the boy had made his way ceased about five feet from where he stood, and that he must have jumped on to a narrow piece of stone not a foot long and somewhere about a third of that width; and though, in the vast chasm in which they both were, the height above him, where Saxe was spread-eagled, as it were, against the perpendicular rock, looked perfectly insignificant, he was close upon a hundred feet up, and a fall would have been very serious, if not fatal.