"Then, in God's name, let us try!" said Nellie; "only tell me what to do, and I will do it—if I can."
"Hold fast the rope, that is all. Never let one hand go until the other has grasped it firmly, and leave the rest to me. I will help to place your feet in safe resting-places as we go down. Only trust me, and all will yet be well."
"I will trust to you and to God, and our Lady," said Nellie, unconsciously repeating the password of the morning. Her color was rising fast, and her eyes had begun to sparkle with excitement. O'More seized the propitious moment, and, almost before Nellie knew it, she had begun her perilous descent.
"Are you steady now—quite steady?" he asked, in as low a voice as if he feared to startle the air with motion by speaking louder. Yes! with the natural instinct of a mountain climber Nellie had already found a rough indented spot in which her foot was firmly planted, and he descended a step lower. Thus inch by inch they went, Nellie ever clinging to the rope, and O'More guiding her descent with a success he had hardly looked for, and which he felt to be almost miraculous. His heart at last beat high with hope; for he saw by the distance which they had descended that they must be nearing a sort of shelf or platform formed by a sudden bulging out of the lower strata of the cliffs, and he knew that they were safe if they could only reach that spot, the rest of the path being so well marked that, even without his aid, Nellie could easily have found her way from thence to the sands beneath.
But the surge of the sea boomed louder and louder as she approached it, and at last, fairly forgetting Roger's caution, she turned her head a little, and glanced downward. Then, for the first time, she became fully conscious of the terrible position she occupied, suspended as it seemed by a very thread between earth and sky, and with the great, deep, awful ocean rolling hundreds of feet below her. Her head swam, her eyesight failed her, she had just enough presence of mind left to grasp the rope firmly by both hands, when, feeling as if her senses were utterly deserting her, she cried out:
"O my God, I am going! Save me, Roger, I am going!"
"No, no!" he cried, in agony, for he knew only too well the danger of the thought. "Hold fast—hold on; for Christ's dear sake, hold on! One step—two steps more, and you are safe. There!" he cried, in a voice hoarse with emotion, as he felt his own foot touch the platform; and seizing Nellie by the waist, he drew her, hardly conscious of what he was doing, by main strength to his side. "There, oh! thank God—thank God, you are safe at last!"
He was just in time. Nellie had that very moment let go the rope, and if he had not caught her, would inevitably have been dashed to pieces on the rocks below. As it was, he landed her safely and gently on the ledge where he himself was standing, and without venturing to loose her entirely from his grasp, laid her down, that she might recover from her nervous panic.
"You are safe," he kept repeating, as if it required the assurance of his own voice to make certain of the fact. "You are safe!" and then with an instinctive yet entirely unacknowledged consciousness on his part, that his own safety might perhaps be at least a portion of her care, he added—"we are safe now. You can stay here until you are quite yourself again; only do not look up or down—at least not just yet, not until the giddiness is gone. You forgot Lot's wife, or this never would have happened."
Nellie was not insensible, though she looked so. She only felt as if she were in a dream. She understood perfectly all that Roger said; the shadow even of a smile seemed to pass over her white lips as he alluded to Lot's wife; but his voice fell with a muffled sound, as if it came from a great distance, on her ear; and earth, and sky, and cliff, and ocean, all seemed blending and floating in a wild fantasy through her brain. By degrees, however, a sort of awakening seemed to creep over her, but she did not use it at first either to look up or speak. Possibly she felt that words would be powerless to express her thoughts, and was glad of any excuse for silence. Roger did not like to hurry her, and he therefore employed the next few minutes in scanning the sea in search of Henrietta. She was there, exactly in the place in which he had bidden her to wait for him; but she was watching the burning tower overhead, and had evidently very little notion that any of its victims had escaped. From the spot where he was standing, he could easily have made her hear him; but fearing that his voice might rouse up some hidden foe, he turned to Nellie for assistance.