But his answer came in a dull, muffled, despairing monotone:
“No.”
I wriggled and shuffled my body a little more forward, forcing my boot toes into a crevice as I did so, for it seemed that now the slightest strain would draw me over the precipice. But there was no other resource: Tom must have help; and I lay shivering there as, with an upward spring, the candle between his teeth, Tom clutched my coat, I shuddering the while, and wondering whether the cloth would give way, or whether I should be drawn down.
We were looking straight into each other’s eyeballs, lit by the guttering candle, as, with trial after trial, exerting the great muscular strength in his arms, Tom climbed higher and higher till he could touch my hands, my arms, and then hold on by my neck, when he stopped panting, just as, in his convulsive efforts, his teeth met through the candle, ground through the wick, and the upper portion fell far below into the torrent to leave us in that awful darkness.
“Hold fast, Mas’r Harry!” Tom hissed in my ear. “Crook your hands. No! Clasp ’em together, to give me a foothold.”
“Tom!” I groaned, “I’m slipping. I can hold on no longer.”
“A moment—a moment, Mas’r Harry,” he cried.
I clasped my fingers together, when, bending his body into a half circle, he got one foot into my hands, forced himself rapidly up, staying my downward progress of inch after inch, as the weight of his body pressed me to the rock; but as he turned to hold me in his turn, it was just as I felt myself going faster and faster, gliding head downwards towards the torrent.
Another struggle, and, wet and bleeding, I was by Tom’s side, for him to hold tightly by one of my hands, as with the other he felt his way along slowly for some yards, when once more we sank upon the rocky floor, to lie panting, our breath drawn in hysterical sobs, and a darkness around that was too fearful even to contemplate.
Our despair was such that we could find no words; but at last Tom said, in a voice that I could hardly hear for the roar of the torrent, which seemed to be here condensed by the narrow passage: