Carthew glared across the black gulf at his feet, his free hand clenched, in helpless despair. He would gladly have given his earldom then in exchange for a pair of wings.
"I'll bolt up and get a ladder brought down," groaned Lord Ingoldsby. And he would have made off without more ado but that Carthew had seized him by the sleeve.
"Here! Hold this," commanded Carthew, and thrust the smoking lamp into his hands. Sallie had turned to follow Captain Dove, with dragging steps. He could not believe that she meant what she had said. He would not let her go without making sure. Farish M'Kissock's contemptuous words had recurred to his mind—"if you're man enough to master her!" Instinct told him that she would not turn back now, and—a man's last stake was all he had left to venture.
"Stop, stop! It's sheer suicide," the marquis cried shrilly, as Carthew ran limping up the tunnel as far as the straight extended, and faced about, throwing off his coat, and balanced there for a breathless instant and then came racing down past him to launch himself bodily into space.
No human being could have leaped the distance, and Carthew had been further handicapped by his lameness. He shot, as if from a catapult, nearly as high as the arched rock-roof, his elbows close, chin on chest, head between his shoulders, knees at his temples and heels tucked back, and, on the downward curve, reached the lower lip of the chasm, landing on one shoulder, to hang there for the space of a couple of heart-beats, as if poised for the inevitable rebound.
Lord Ingoldsby heard the dull thud of his fall and Sallie's stifled, heart-broken cry. He opened his eyes and saw the girl desperately striving to pull a hunched-up, relaxing body back from the brink over which, but for her, it would already have toppled. He thought they must both have slipped over before, at the finish, Sallie succeeded in drawing Carthew into safety, and sat down beside him, swaying from side to side, as if her own back were broken.
But, presently, Carthew looked up and then he scrambled on to his knees with a suppressed grunt of agony. For a time the whole world swam redly about him, but he clenched his teeth, not to be overcome. And when Sallie in turn got on to her feet again, white and shaking, he had recovered the use of his voice.
"I won't let you go—dear," he said dazedly, and started, in renewed alarm for her, as they heard Captain Dove calling her harshly from below.
"Coming," she called back, since she could not help herself.
"You must stay here, or—he'll kill you!" she whispered in an agony of entreaty. "I'll go now; it will be best so. And if, by and by, you still care to follow—"