“Oh, sir!” cried the eldest of the young ladies, “you see how we are situated: can you assist us?”
The swimmer had risen erect. He looked right and left, before making rejoinder.
“Can you swim?” he asked.
“Not one of us.”
“It is bad,” he muttered to himself. “Either way, it is doubtful whether I could carry them through it. It’s been as much as I could do for myself. We’d be almost certain of being crushed. What, in heaven’s name, can be done for them?”
They were thoughts rather than words, and the girls could not know them. But they saw the stranger’s brow clouded with apprehension; and with eyes straining into his, they stood trembling.
He turned suddenly, and glanced up the cliff. He remembered the seam he had observed from above. He could now survey it from base to summit.
A gleam of hope flashed over his face. It could be scaled!
“Surely you can climb up there?” he asked, encouragingly.
“No, no! I’m sure we could never go up that way. I could not.”