The bright lights of the city called to him from afar. He had seen much of that bright and terrible city; had meant to see much more. “Must see it all,” he told himself.
“But now I must forget it,” he resolved.
And surely he must, for now he was beneath the basket. The tiny finger of light from his electric torch shot about here and there.
Steadying its motion, directing it toward the end of the cable, he began studying the problem at hand.
And then—something happened. Did his hand slip? Did the noose about his foot give away? He will never know. Nor will he forget that instant when his flashlight, slipping from his chattering teeth, shot downward and he, by the merest chance, escaped following it.
How it happened he will never be able to tell. This much he knew: he hung there in all that blackness supporting his weight by one desperately gripping hand.
Somewhere below was the noose that should offer him footing. Somewhere far, far below were black waters waiting. And through his mind there flashed a thousand pictures of the bright and beautiful world he might, in ten seconds’ time, leave behind.
All this in the space of a split second, then groping madly, he found the rope with his other hand. After that began the heart-breaking task of groping in the dark with his foot for the dangling rope loop, while the muscles in his arms became burning bands of fire.
“I must win!” he whispered. “I must!”
“Johnny! Johnny Thompson!” came from above. “What has happened?”