promptness of Jack, who had
flung himself on his knees and whipped his hands under the Burman's
arms, and held him up. Warned by this misadventure, they moved slowly
and carefully along the narrow track which now lay before them.

"Take care, take care," said Mr. Haydon, "this road is worse than the
others. We must go in single file. These beams will not take any great
weight."

They spread themselves out in a line, with a yard or more between each
person, and went gingerly forward.

The truth was, that hundreds of years before, when some native ruler
had gone to immense trouble and labour to build these roads, the pass
had been an important highway. But a tremendous land-slide had blocked
a portion of the pass, and swept away a number of the wooden roads,
and the way had fallen into disuse. Since then the vast beams of teak
which formed the road-bed had been slowly crumbling into decay, and
many were very insecure.

As Jack brought up the rear of the little procession, he kept his eyes
fixed on the road at his feet, and this for two reasons. One, to avoid
the rotten places, and the other, because to look around from a
roadway six feet wide into the yawning gulf which gaped beside him was
very dizzying.

Suddenly he heard a scream from the native woman who guided them. He
looked ahead at once, but could not see her. The little procession was
now winding its way round an acute angle of the cliff about which the
road had bent sharply. The woman was out of sight; Me Dain was
disappearing. Mr. Haydon quickened his steps, and Jack hurried on too.
What had that scream meant? It had not been loud, but low and full of
awful terror. What lay beyond the angle?

Jack turned the corner and saw, and his brown face blanched as he saw
the frightful corner into which circumstances had driven them. Ten
yards beyond the angle, the road ended abruptly, broken short off.
Whether the beams had given way and fallen into the chasm, or whether
an avalanche of rocks had beaten the road into ruins, they knew not,
nor did it matter. What mattered was this, that fifty yards beyond
them the road had again joined the solid bed of the pass, and that now
along that fifty yards nothing was left save here and there a broken
stump of teak standing out from the face of the precipice. Nothing
without wings could pass over the wide space where the road had been
stripped from the cliff.

For a moment no one could speak. They could only stare aghast