cliff at their feet dropped
sheer down and lost itself in the swirling vapor. By all appearances it
might be a mile to bottom instead of two hundred feet.

"All ready?" he asked.

"Let her go!" Spillane shouted, to make himself heard above the roar of
the wind.

He had clambered in beside his wife, and was holding one of her hands in
his.

Jerry looked upon this with disapproval. "You'll need all your hands for
holdin' on, the way the wind's yowlin'."

The man and the woman shifted their hands accordingly, tightly gripping
the sides of the car, and Jerry slowly and carefully released the brake.
The drum began to revolve as the endless cable passed round it, and the
car slid slowly out into the chasm, its trolley wheels rolling on the
stationary cable overhead, to which it was suspended.

It was not the first time Jerry had worked the cable, but it was the
first time he had done so away from the supervising eye of his father.
By means of the brake he regulated the speed of the car. It needed
regulating, for at times, caught by the stronger gusts of wind, it
swayed violently back and forth; and once, just before it was swallowed
up in a rain squall, it seemed about to spill out its human contents.

After that Jerry had no way of knowing where the car was except by means
of the cable. This he watched keenly as it glided around the drum.
"Three hundred feet," he breathed to himself, as the cable markings went
by, "three hundred and fifty, four hundred; four hundred and----"

The cable had stopped. Jerry threw off the brake, but it did not move.
He caught the cable with his hands and tried to start it by tugging
smartly. Something had gone wrong. What? He could not guess; he could
not see. Looking up, he could vaguely make out the empty car, which had
been crossing from the opposite cliff at a speed equal to that of the
loaded car. It was about two hundred and fifty feet away. That meant, he
knew, that somewhere in the gray obscurity, two hundred feet above the
river and two hundred and fifty feet from the other bank, Spillane and
his wife were suspended and stationary.

Three times Jerry shouted with all the shrill force of his lungs, but no
answering cry came out of the storm. It was impossible for him to hear
them or to make himself heard. As he stood for a moment, thinking
rapidly, the flying clouds seemed to thin and lift. He caught a brief
glimpse of the swollen Sacramento beneath, and a briefer glimpse of th