“It is frightfully dangerous, but it is perhaps worth trying—if you think you have the strength for it. What say you, professor? Have you nerve enough to make the drop, trusting to us to catch you?”
“Anything is better than this,” answered the professor. “Your own and Mildmay’s are the most difficult portions of the task. If you are equal to your parts I will perform mine; but my strength is not sufficient to justify my offering to change places with either of you.”
“Then let us try it,” exclaimed the colonel decisively. “Will you go first, Mildmay, or shall I?”
“You go first,” answered Mildmay. “I am pretty strong in the arms, and think the method I have proposed the safest, on the whole.”
“All right, then. I am ready whenever you are.”
“Stand firm, then, and let me steady myself down over the ledge by your leg—we shall be down, one way or another, all the sooner. Now, look out, I am going!”
The colonel braced himself as firmly as possible against the strain, and Mildmay lowered himself cautiously down until he hung from the ledge by both hands. Then, without wasting a moment, Lethbridge carefully placed himself in position, got down on his knees, lowered one foot until it rested on Mildmay’s shoulder, then the other; firmly grasped the ledge with both hands, outside Mildmay’s; got his knees down on Mildmay’s shoulders, and then, warning the lieutenant to hold firm, grasped him by both wrists and proceeded as rapidly and carefully as possible to slide down his body until he hung to him by a firm hand-grasp round the ankles. The muscles of poor Mildmay’s hands and arms quivered and fairly cracked with the terrible strain thrown upon them during the latter part of this manoeuvre; but he set his teeth hard, remembering that the lives of the whole party depended upon him just then, and hung on. It was not for long. The colonel paused only for a moment to give one downward glance at the spot upon which he was about to drop, and then let go. He pitched fairly on the ledge, slipped, staggered for a moment, almost went over, but recovered himself and stood firm. Then moving a little to one side he prepared to receive Mildmay, and gave him the word to drop. It came none too soon, for the lieutenant’s quivering muscles were already failing him, his nerveless fingers were already relaxing their grasp, and he felt that he must let go, whether or not, in another moment. At the cry from Lethbridge he released his hold, and next moment, with the colonel’s arm thrown firmly round his waist, stood safely on the ledge.
It was next the professor’s turn; but now that the critical moment had arrived for him too to drop from one ledge to another, the unwelcome discovery was made that his nerves were unequal to the task, and for some time persuasion, cajolery, entreaties, and threats proved equally unavailing to tempt him to the enterprise. At length, however, in a fit of desperation he essayed the task, hurried over it, missed his hold, and went whirling outward from the face of the cliff. In another instant he would have been over the precipice, and plunging headlong downward to the death which awaited him thousands of feet below, but most fortunately both Mildmay and the colonel saw the mishap, and made a simultaneous snatch at him; the former succeeded in grasping him by the arm, and, before either of the trio had time to fully realise what had actually happened, poor von Schalckenberg was dragged—pale, breathless, and completely unnerved—in upon the ledge.
A few minutes were allowed the unhappy professor in which to recover his presence of mind, and then the little party cautiously worked their way downward along the ledge, finally arriving half an hour later on the narrow platform of ice which was now all that remained of the plateau whereon the Flying Fish had been grounded.
It had been the intention of the unfortunate adventurers to make a temporary halt here, for the purpose of recruiting their exhausted energies so far as it might be done by taking a few minutes’ rest, but the ice was so shivered by the shock of its recent rupture as to present a very insecure appearance, and they were therefore constrained to keep moving notwithstanding their fatigue. Very fortunately the breaking away of the snow-bank had, in one place, laid bare the surface of the rock, which here was very jagged and uneven (which would probably account for the original accumulation of the snow in that spot), and these irregularities were promptly utilised as a means of further descent. By their aid an additional two hundred feet of downward movement was slowly and painfully accomplished, and then Mildmay (who was now leading the way) found himself within a foot or two of the lower edge of an almost perpendicular slope overhanging an awful abyss of unfathomable depth, his further progress downward being barred by the fact that beneath him the rock sloped inwards! A single downward glance sufficed not only to reveal to him his appalling situation, but also to wring from his lips such a piercing cry of horror as effectually warned his friends from following him any further. Then he pressed his body close to the face of the rock, and clung there convulsively with feet and hands to the trifling irregularities of surface which alone afforded him a hold, his blood curdling and his brain reeling at the thought of the horrible deadly danger which menaced him. A single slip of hand or foot, a momentary failure of a muscle, the slightest seizure of cramp or vertigo, and he would go whirling headlong downward at least five hundred feet sheer through the air before reaching the ground below. He was so unnerved that he was actually incapable of replying to the colonel’s anxious hail as to what was the matter.