'I will crawl to you on my hands and knees.'
'Good God! You will surely kill yourself!'
'Nothing can be more dangerous than to lie here on the wet ground. We must only take care to keep within hearing of each other.'
While I spoke, I began to put my crawling expedient in practice; still calling to Clarke, every half minute, and endeavouring to proceed in the direction of his voice.
I found the rough impediments around me increase; till, presently, I came to one that was ruder than the rest. I crawled upon it, sustained by my knees and right hand, and stretching forward with my left. I groped, but felt nothing. I cautiously laid my belly to the ground and stretched out my other arm. Still it was vacancy. I stretched a little more violently; feeling forward, and on each side; and I seemed to be projected upon a point, my head and shoulders inclining over a dark abyss, which the imagination left unfathomable.
I own I felt terror; and the sensation certainly was not lessened, when, making an attempt to recover my position and go back, my support began to give way. My effort to retreat was as violent as my terror: but it was too late. The ground shook, loosened, and, with the struggle I made carrying me with it, toppled headlong down. What the height that I fell was I have no means of ascertaining; for the heath on which we were wandering abounds with quarries, and precipices; but either it was, in fact, or my fears made it prodigious.
Had this expedient been proposed under such circumstances, as the only probable one of bringing me and Clarke together again, who would not have shuddered at it? Yet, though it is true I received a violent shock, I know of no injury that it did me. As soon as I recovered my presence of mind, I replied to Clarke; whose questions were vehement; he having heard me fall. After mutual enquiry, we found we were both once more upon our legs, and had escaped broken bones. Though they had been severely shaken: Clarke's much the most violently.
But where were we now? How should we discover? Perhaps in a stone quarry; or lime pit. Perhaps at the edge of waters. It might be we had fallen down only on the first bank, or ridge of a quarry; and had a precipice ten fold more dreadful before us.
While we were conjecturing, the stroke of a large clock, brought whizzing in the wind, struck full upon our ear. We listened, with the most anxious ardour. The next stroke was very, very faint: a different current had carried it a different way: and, with all our eager attention, we could not be certain that we heard any more.
Yet, though we had lost much time and our progress had been excessively tedious, it could not be two o'clock in the morning. It might indeed very probably be twelve.