These—the Doctor’s words—sounded close at hand, but the speaker was invisible.
“All right; I’ll come,” cried Bart; and as he spoke a feeling of shrinking came over him, and he felt ready to draw back. But calling upon himself, he went closer to the edge, trying to look under, and the next moment there was the head of the Beaver just below, gazing up at him with a half-mocking smile upon his face.
“You think I’m afraid,” said Bart, looking down at him, “but I can’t help that. I’ll come all the same;” and swiftly turning, he lowered himself down till his body was hanging as it were in space, and only his chest and elbows were on the shelf.
Then for a moment he seemed to hesitate, but he mastered the shrinking directly after, and lowered himself more and more till he hung at the extremity of his hands, vainly seeking for a foothold.
“Are you there, Beaver?” he shouted, and he felt his waist seized and his sides pinioned by two strong hands, his own parted company from the shelf, and he seemed to fall a terrible distance, but it was only a couple of feet, and he found himself standing upon the solid rock, with the shelf jutting out above his head, and plenty of room to peer about amongst the clustering bushes that had here made themselves a home.
The chief smiled at his startled look, and pointing to the left, Bart glanced sidewise at where the precipice went down, and then walked onward cautiously along a rugged shelf not much unlike the one from which he had descended, save that it was densely covered with shrubby growth.
This shelf suddenly ended in a rift like a huge crevice in the face of the mountain, but there was a broad crack before it, and this it was necessary to leap before entering the rift.
Bart stopped short, gazing down into what seemed an awful abyss, but the Beaver passed him lightly, as if there were no danger whatever, and lightly leaped across to some rough pieces of rock.
The distance was nothing, but the depths below made it seem an awful leap, till Bart felt that the Doctor must have gone over it before him, and without further hesitation he bounded across and stood beside the chief, who led the way farther into the rift to where, some fifty feet from the entrance, the Doctor was standing, hammer in hand, gazing intently at the newly chipped rock and the fragments that lay around.
“At last, Bart!” he cried joyously.