Elfride’s heart fell like lead.
“But you can get back?” she wildly inquired.
Knight strove with all his might for two or three minutes, and the drops of perspiration began to bead his brow.
“No, I am unable to do it,” he answered.
Elfride, by a wrench of thought, forced away from her mind the sensation that Knight was in bodily danger. But attempt to help him she must. She ventured upon the treacherous incline, propped herself with the closed telescope, and gave him her hand before he saw her movements.
“O Elfride! why did you?” said he. “I am afraid you have only endangered yourself.”
And as if to prove his statement, in making an endeavour by her assistance they both slipped lower, and then he was again stayed. His foot was propped by a bracket of quartz rock, balanced on the verge of the precipice. Fixed by this, he steadied her, her head being about a foot below the beginning of the slope. Elfride had dropped the glass; it rolled to the edge and vanished over it into a nether sky.
“Hold tightly to me,” he said.
She flung her arms round his neck with such a firm grasp that whilst he remained it was impossible for her to fall.
“Don’t be flurried,” Knight continued. “So long as we stay above this block we are perfectly safe. Wait a moment whilst I consider what we had better do.”