I prepared to start, handing him the one candle we now had alight, when I gave utterance to a cry of despair; for the linen band which had crossed my breast, and supported the wallet, had been worn through by the constant climbing, and I suppose must have broken when I was making this last ascent. At all events, the wallet was gone—plunged, I expect, into the torrent, and bearing with it the flint, steel, tinder-box, and matches; so that, should any accident befall our one light, we should be in the horrible darkness of the place.
“Never mind, Mas’r Harry,” said Tom. “It ain’t no use crying after spilt milk. Up you go, sir.”
With failing heart and knitted brow I exerted myself, climbed to Tom’s hips, as he clung to the rock and lighted me; then to his shoulders; stood there for a moment trembling, and then struggled into the cleft, turned round, lay down in a horrible position, sloping towards the torrent, with my head two feet lower than my knees, and then stretched out my hands to Tom.
“Can’t reach, Mas’r Harry,” he said, after one or two despairing trials. “You’ll have to go and leave me. See if you can get out and fetch help.”
For a moment I felt stunned at this unforeseen termination of our efforts, for there really had seemed hope now, unless this fresh passage should prove too narrow to let us pass.
I did not answer Tom, but drew myself up again to think; when, taking off my coat, I rolled it round and round, laid fast hold of the collar, and then, once more lying down, I lowered the coat to Tom.
“Can you reach that?” I said.
“No, Mas’r Harry—not by a foot,” said Tom gloomily, his words being shouted, as the roar of the torrent beneath us swept his voice away.
He stood in a position of awful peril: a false step, and he would be plunged into the torrent; and as I looked down at his upturned face and the flickering candle, I wondered how I could have ever dared to stand there myself.
“Can you reach it now?” I said, lowering myself a little more.