We have said that the whole body of the pic-nickers rushed up to the edge of the plateau, and that all, or nearly all, caught glimpses of the situation. Then came that cry, that shutting of the eyes and springing back, until only three or four, of whom Horace Townsend was one and Captain Hector Coles was not another, remained on the verge. Margaret Hayley, among those who had gazed down and drawn back, remained a few feet from the edge, and the Captain was either so careful of her safety or so anxious to furnish himself with an excuse for remaining no nearer, that he caught her by the dress and retained his grip as if she had been some bundle of quartermaster's goods that he was fearful of having slip through his fingers! Frightened inquiries and equally frightened replies, mingled with moans and sobs and wringings of female hands, went round the circle thus scattered over the lower part of the plateau; and for a moment those noises made the still-ascending cries for help almost inaudible.
Horace Townsend stood at the very edge, and except perhaps sharing in the first cry, he had not uttered one word. He no doubt understood, intuitively, like the rest, that the poor man must have been attempting the mad descent, when the undergrowth by which he held fast gave way in his hands, or some stone caved out beneath him, sending him headlong downward for a plunge of two thousand feet, from which he had only been temporarily stopped by striking and gripping the root of the tree as he fell. Beyond this, and with reference to any possibility of saving the perilled man, he was probably quite as much in the dark as any of the others. He stood half bent, his dusky cheek pale and his face strangely contorted, his hands clasped low as if wringing themselves surreptitiously, and the eyes beneath his bent brow looking into the gulf as if he was trying to peer downward into the eternal mystery which that man was so soon to fathom.
Suddenly his face lighted. "Hush! I must speak to that man!" he said, in a low but intense voice, and the behest was obeyed so quickly that almost total silence fell upon the top of the plateau.
"Hallo, below there!" he cried, as the call of agony ceased for an instant.
"Help! help! oh help! came back from below.
"Do you understand what I say?" again he called.
"Yes!—help! help!" came feebly back.
"Get that rope from the foot of the swing there, quick, some of you!" he cried, and his voice seemed for the time to clear from its hoarseness and ring like a trumpet. "Quick!—cut it away at the bottom and bring it all here!"
Half a dozen of the young men and one or two of the ladies, delighted to aid in any hope of saving the perilled man (for the most thoughtless of us are naturally, after all, kind and averse to death and suffering), sprung for the rope. Two of them reached the foot of the swing ahead of the others, the pocket-knife of one was out in an instant, and in another moment they came up dragging nearly or quite an hundred feet of strong inch rope.
"We have a rope here that will hold you: can you catch it and hold on or tie it around your body?" the lawyer called down again.