Chapter Twenty Eight.
The Crystal Grotto.
Dale threw down the rope from his shoulder, took off hat and jacket, replaced the rope like a scarf, and then stood looking upwards.
“Oh, pray be careful!” cried Saxe, rather faintly.
“Yes, miss,” said Dale mockingly. “Why don’t you come and take hold of my hand! There, boy, I have climbed before now, and I’ll be as careful as I can. Hah! that’s the better way. ‘Take it coolly,’ Saxe, as Jacob Faithful used to say. I’ll soon have you down.”
He went along the chasm a few yards, and then began to climb up the nearly perpendicular face of the rock, taking advantage of every niche and projection, and gradually getting higher and higher, but always farther away from where Saxe hung watching him with lips apart, and in constant dread lest there should be a sudden slip and a fall.
“And that would make it horrible,” thought the lad. “What should I do then?”
Dale climbed on talking the while when he did not give vent to a good-humoured grunt over some extra difficult bit.
Saxe said nothing, for he felt hurt. It seemed to him that his companion was treating him like a child, and saying all kinds of moral things in a light way, so as to keep up his spirits; and, as Dale saw the effect his words produced, he said less.