“Stop!” cried Guy, in tones of agony. “My heavens, Melton, we are lost, doomed to the most horrible of deaths. What blind, desperate fools we were. We can never get back to the lake, and our companions can never reach us here. We could not be more widely separated were the world itself rolling between us.”
“What do you mean?” cried Forbes. “Are you mad, Chutney?”
“Mad? No. I wish I were. You are blind, Melton. How can we get that rope up the seventy feet stretch from the ledge to the summit of the cliff?”
CHAPTER XXXII.
GOOD-BY TO THE LAKE.
Melton dropped the rope and staggered back from the cliff, his face deadly pale.
“Yes,” he said hoarsely, “you—you are right, Chutney. How could we have done such a foolish thing? From that narrow width of the ledge one could not throw a rope twenty feet in air. We are hopelessly cut off from our companions.”
“Hullo, down there!”