As he spoke and said encouraging things to Sam, Bart felt himself impelled to gaze down into the depths beneath him, and as he did so, the dashing bravery that had impelled him to risk his life that he might encourage his follower to creep back, all seemed to forsake him, a cold perspiration broke out on face and limbs, accompanied by a horrible paralysing sense of fear, and in an instant he was suffering from the same loss of nerve as the man whom he wished to help.
Bart’s hands clutched at the rough branch, and he strove to drive his finger nails into the bark in a spasmodic effort to save himself from death. He was going to fall. He knew that he was. Nothing could save him—nothing, and in imagination he saw himself lose his hold of the branch, slip sidewise, and go down headlong as the bears had fallen, to strike against the rocks, glance off, and then plunge down, down, swifter and swifter into space.
The sensation was fearful, and for the time being he could make no effort to master it. One overwhelming sense of terror had seized upon him, and this regularly froze all action till he now crouched as helpless and unnerved as the poor fellow before him who never even turned his head, but clung to the branch as if insensible to everything but the horrors of his position.
Joses shouted to him, and said something again and again, but Bart only heard an indistinct murmur as he stared straight down at the tops of the pines and other trees half a mile below him; and then came a dreamy, wondering feeling, as to how much pain he should feel when he fell; how long he would be going down all that distance; whether he should have to fall on the tops of the pine-trees, or amongst the rough ravines of rock.
And so on, thought after thought of this kind, till all at once, as if out of a dream, a voice seemed to say to him:
“Well, I shouldn’t have thought, Master Bart, as I’d taught all these years, was such a coward!”
The words stung him, and seemed to bring him back to himself.
Coward! what would Maude think of him for being such a coward? Not that it would much matter if he fell down there and were smashed to death. What would the Doctor, who had given him so many lessons on presence of mind, coolness in danger, and the like? And here was he completely given up to the horror of his position, making no effort when it was perhaps no harder to get back than it had been to get forward.
“I won’t think of the depth,” said Bart, setting his teeth, and, raising himself upright, he hitched himself a few inches back.
Then the feeling of danger came upon him once more, and was mastering him again rapidly, when the great rough voice of old Joses rang out loudly in a half-mocking, half-angry tone: