He came at length to the edge of a precipice that dropped sheer down at least three hundred feet.
He could not tell for a moment which way the path ran here, but he followed along the edge of the precipice in the same general direction in which he had been traveling until he came to a point where less than fifty feet away was another steep wall of rock.
Between him and the second wall was a deep chasm. It reminded him of the canyons with which he had become familiar in Western America.
He recalled also the small canyon that he had managed to cross during one of his adventures in Australia, but in this place there were no trees large enough to enable him to climb them and bend the tops down until he could drop down on the other side.
“I’m not so certain, anyway,” he said to himself, “that I want to get across. Yes, I am, though, and I see the way.”
A little further away he saw that there was a rope stretched directly from one side of the chasm to the other.
He now proceeded very cautiously for the presence of that rope there showed him that he was on the track of white men. He listened constantly for any sound of human beings, but heard none.
At last he came to the spot where the rope was fastened at his side of the chasm. It was made fast upon a tree trunk which grew at the very edge, and five or six feet below it there was a little shelf of rock just big enough for a man to stand on.
The rope went straight across to the other side of the chasm, where it was fastened above a broader shelf of rock. The shelving at this side would have held three or four men comfortably.
“This is their bridge,” thought Trim. “I wonder if they get across by a hand-over-hand act. If they do they are all good athletes.”