CHAPTER XII
QUEER ACTIONS
It was Amy’s voice, frantic, terrified, that roused Jessie to a more immediate sense of her great peril. Her foot had caught in a crotch of a branch as she fell, and by this she hung, head downward, hands clasped desperately about the branch that had stopped her descent. In that position she could neither let herself down nor draw herself up. And she was still a dangerous distance from the ground.
Amy had climbed up to her, had taken in the situation in one startled glance. Nell, who had been following Jessie, clung to a branch, staring down, weak and sick with fright.
“Hang on, Jess, honey,” begged Amy. “We will get you out all right. Hold on for just another minute.”
Jessie held on desperately while Amy tugged at her foot, and Nell, mastering her fright, descended slowly. Miss Alling was calling out advice and commands. A horrible dizziness was engulfing Jessie. She felt as though all the blood in her body was pounding in her ears. The sight of the ground so far below set her senses reeling, made her fingers feel like putty.
“Are you holding hard?” she heard Amy’s voice asking as though from a long distance. “I have your foot loose, Jess and Nell is waiting below to catch you and let you down easy. Can you hold on?”
Jessie must have said yes, though she never afterward remembered having done so, for the next moment she felt her foot released, felt herself swing downward, felt Nell catch her in one strong young arm and hold her tight against the tree the while Nell’s voice urged frantically:
“There, put your foot on that branch—to the right—to the right!”
She felt it at last—something solid under her foot! She clung there, fighting the dizziness that swept over her again, thankful for Nell’s supporting arm.
The vertigo lasted for only a moment, and with the help of the girls she managed somehow to make the rest of that descent and reach the ground. There Miss Alling caught her in her arms and half led, half carried her into the lodge.