CHAPTER XVIII.
BETWEEN EARTH AND SKY.
But no such sound came. Instead they heard something that brought them instantly to the alert.
“Hey, fellows! Come quick!”
It was Rob’s voice, coming up to them over the edge of that dizzy height.
In three bounds, careless of the consequences of a false step, they were on the parapet of the tower where they had last seen Rob, as he reached out for the treacherous “flag pole.”
“Look, boys! Look! There he is! Hold on, Rob, old fellow. Hold on, for heaven’s sake,” cried Merritt.
Rob, his feet dug into the rough interstices of the old ruinous wall, was clinging to a stoutly rooted bush that had broken his fall and given him one second in which to stay his awful plunge into space. But his position even now was bad enough.
His face was as white as chalk, and the sweat streamed down it in rivers as he gazed up at his comrades above. He was fully thirty feet below them, and they had no rope, no means of saving him from his fearful position! In the very nature of things his muscles, strong as they were, were bound to give out before long. It was not in flesh and blood to endure such a tension long; and then—— But they dared not think of that.
It was a moment for quick action and nimble wits. The shrub to which Rob was clinging appeared to be firmly rooted. In fact, it must have been, to have withstood the strain of his crashing fall. Then, too, his toes were driven home into a crack of the wall, relieving to some extent the weight brought to bear on the shrub. But this could not last indefinitely.
Suddenly Merritt noticed something. Just above the place where Rob clung to the wall, a hundred feet above the waving banana fronds, was an opening. As he saw this a sudden idea struck him. He thought he saw a way, a desperate way, it is true, but still a way to rescue Rob from his perilous position.