“While there is life there is hope,” he murmured to himself, and involuntarily recalled the night when he had stood upon the tower of the old mission, a hundred feet above the ground, and deemed that his end had come. Yet he had escaped from that dilemma, and more impossible things had happened than that he should get out of his present scrape alive.
All at once, while he sat thus meditating, the boy spied, not far above his head and only a short distance away, a dangling vine some two inches in circumference, and seemingly tough and fibrous.
“It ought to bear my weight,” thought Jack, “and if only it will, I’ll get out of this hideous place yet.”
He began making brave efforts to reach the trailing tendon. Time and again, with hands that were cut and bleeding from the rough surface of the rock, he was compelled to desist in his efforts, but at last, mustering his waning strength, he made a mighty leap. His fingers closed on the vine and he drew himself upward. But as the boy’s full weight came upon the green trailer it snapped abruptly, and Jack was thrown violently to the ground.
He fell with such force that he was stunned and helpless. Clasping the broken bit of treacherous vine in his hands, the Border Boy lay on the floor of the crevasse, senseless.
CHAPTER VI.
AN EXCITING QUEST.
In the meantime, the keenest anxiety prevailed in the camp. After awaiting breakfast for a long time, it was at last eaten and the tin dishes scoured, without there being any sign of the missing boy.