All saw the movement, now, and all began to understand it; but oh, with what redoubled agitation was the truth realized! He was going down that frail rope, and into what peril! The rope fastened, he stepped forward to the verge, while a murmur ran round the frightened group, even coming from the lips of those who had never spoken to him: "Oh, don't!" Margaret Hayley was no longer stone: she cast one glance at the face of Captain Hector Coles, saw that the expression on it was every thing rather than fear or anxiety, then jerked away her dress from his hand and darted forward.
"No—do not go!" she said, grasping the lawyer by the arm on the very verge.
"I must!" Then for the first time he appeared to see her.
"No! If I bid you stay for my sake, will you do it?"
"For your sake, Margaret Hayley, I would go all the quicker. Stand back, for God's sake!—you may fall!"
She said no other word. Captain Hector Coles sprang forward and grasped her arm to draw her back. She jerked it away, almost angrily, and never stirred so far from the edge as to prevent her looking down the schute. Half a dozen of the others, all gentlemen, had taken the same risk of crowding to the edge, their very breath held; but none of them would any more have thought, just then, of offering to aid her, than of tendering the same support to one of the rooted saplings on the cliff. It was a fearful moment, but not the weakest heart on that plateau beat within the bosom of the white-handed Philadelphia girl!
Horace Townsend threw himself down on his face as he reached the edge, grasped the rope and crawled over backwards in that way, descending it hand-over-hand. Those too far back from the edge to see, heard him call out to the man below as he disappeared from sight: "Hold fast like a man! I am coming!" Then they saw no more, and for the moment heard no more.
Those who stood on the verge, and Margaret Hayley among them—saw the adventurous lawyer descend the rope with slow and steady care but evident labor, until he reached the loop opposite and nearly under the suspended man. Then they saw him weave his right arm into the loop until the strands of rope seemed to go around it three or four times, throw down his feet to the rock so as to raise his shoulders away from it, and commence gathering in the loose rope below with his left. Directly he seemed to have the end in his hand, and they saw him stretch the left arm as if to throw it around the body of the perilled man. At that moment they saw, with a horror that words can make no attempt at describing, that the hand of the Rambler which had held the end of the root gave way and the body swung to a perpendicular, head downward, only suspended by the hook formed of the leg. All, except one—that one—closed their eyes, confident that the leg too must give way and the poor climber plunge headlong, perhaps bearing down the would-be rescuer with him. But no!—still the body remained in that position for a moment, and in that moment they saw that the rope passed around it and the hand of the lawyer made an attempt, the success of which could not be seen, to tie the rope into a knot about the waist. But even at that instant the tension of the stiffened leg gave way and they saw the body plunge downwards, head first; where, was too sickening a horror to conjecture.
No one saw any more—not even Margaret Hayley. With one wild cry she sprang back from the verge and tottered half fainting but still erect, into the arms of some of the other ladies who had been watching the whole scene through her.
Perfect silence—the silence of untold terror and dread. Their own eyes had seen the Rambler plunge headlong towards the realization of that fearful last wish: what hope was there that the other, entangled with him, had not accompanied him? It must be said that for the moment no one dared look over the edge again, and that no one dared, during the same time, to test, by feeling the rope, whether any weight still remained at the end of it! The cast-off coat, vest, hat and shoes of the lawyer assumed the look of dead-men's clothes unseasonably exhibited; and each even looked upon the other with horror because a spectator of the same catastrophe. What must have been the feelings of Margaret Hayley, if, as we have had reason to believe, her first love had faltered in favor of a new ideal? What those of Captain Hector Coles when he believed that a disgusting and audacious rivalry had been removed at least two thousand feet?