“There was a way, a clear, easy way, requiring no more than a bit of nerve to pass over it, and I congratulated myself upon persisting to its discovery. The path was by a stout ledge of ice, adhering to the cliff and projecting out from it for about eighteen inches. The river had fallen. This ledge had been formed when it was at its highest, and when the water had subsided the ice had been left sticking to the rock. The ledge was like the rim of ice that adheres to a tub when a bucketful of freezing water has been taken out.
“I clambered down to it, sounded it, and found 182 it solid. Moreover, it seemed to lead all the way round, broadening and narrowing as it went, but wide enough in every part. I was sure-footed and unafraid, so at once I determined to essay the passage. ‘I am going to try it!’ I called to John, who was clinging to the cliff some yards behind and above me. ‘Don’t follow until I call you.’
“‘Look out!’ said he.
“‘Oh, it’s all right,’ I said, confidently.
“I turned my back to the rock and moved out, stepping sidewise. It was not difficult until I came to a point where the cliff is overhanging––it may be a space of twelve feet or less; then I had to stoop, and the awkward position made my situation precarious in the extreme, for the rock seemed all the while bent on thrusting me off.
“The river was roaring past. Below me the water was breaking over a great rock, whence it shot, swift and strong, against a boulder which rose above it. I could hear the hiss and swish and thunder of it; and had I been less confident in my foothold, I might then and there have been hopelessly unnerved. There was no mercy in those seething rapids. 183
“‘A fall would be the end of me,’ I thought; ‘but I will not fall.’
“Fall I did, however, and that suddenly, just after I had rounded the point and was hidden from John’s sight. The cold of the late afternoon had frozen my boots stiff; they had been soaked in the swamp-lands, and the water was now all turned to ice.
“My soles were slippery and my feet were awkwardly managed. I slipped.
“My feet shot from under me. A flash of terror went through me. Then I found myself lying on my hip, on the edge of the shelf with my legs dangling over the rapids, my shoulder pressing the cliff, my hands flat on the ice, and my arms sustaining nearly the whole weight of my body.