She had gone over the ridge. For an instant her heart was in her mouth; the next she realized that the slope, which was not too steep, ended in a second narrow plateau.
Struggling to break her downward plunge, she grasped at a branch. The branch snapped off. A trailing vine served her no better.
“Yet,” she smiled, “the end will come soon.”
Sooner than she thought. Just when she was waiting the final bump that should announce her arrival at the bottom, she dropped a surprising distance straight down, glanced to the right, slid some twenty feet, then dropped again to land with such a rude shock that for a full moment she lay there utterly oblivious to her strange surroundings.
When at last she came to, and strove to discover what had happened, she found herself in a place of almost complete darkness. Only straight above her, at what seemed an incredible distance, a narrow crack of light shone.
She rose stiffly to feel of her bruises. “None fatal, I guess.” She tried to face the situation with a smile.
“Don’t know where I am, but I’ll not stay long.”
Had she believed in imps she might have fancied one saying: “Oh, won’t you?”
As she stretched her hands above her head to feel for some means of drawing herself up, she found nothing.
“Solid rock.” For the first time she was truly startled. Where was she? How was she to escape?