king the velvet cap. What matter! if I only get
home safe, without damage to life or limb! I only fell once. No one
should trust to anything they grasp, unless they have first proved its
strength. Broom has a good hold, it stands very fast in the soil: once
I seized hold of the roots of a tree, but the roots came away in my
hand, and I slipped back a long way. I closed my eyes: now I must die,
it is all over with me! I was brought up, however, by a rock, in the
middle of a large anthill. I managed to get away from it at last. I
went close to the dry channel on the side of the hill, and kept it in
view, and jumped from tree to tree; but it could scarcely be called
jumping, it was as if I had been cast forwards; my progress was just
like sparrows flying and clapping their wings, and then tumbling topsy
turvy in the air. I felt almost inclined to laugh when this thought
struck me, but it was no laughing matter. I thought to myself, this
will be a story for you to tell all your life long; and then it
occurred to me again--if you could talk about it, you would by that
time be well out of the scrape. I plucked up courage, and hoped it
would soon be all right, and that there was no fear of dying; only I
must get on. And so by dint of first seizing one branch, and then
another, I got forward by degrees, and only slipped back once more, but
I had no more tumbles. Fragments of rock rolled down beside me, jumping
into the air, and rebounding as they went, till at last I seemed to
hear them splash into the river. And I thought to myself that if I
fell, I should fall, just like them, to the bottom and into the river.
I stuck my nails into the earth, and crept on and on, and then sideways
into the underwood, close to the dry channel, where a footing was to be
found. Slowly, slowly, I crawled along. But stop! one step further and
I must have been killed! A rock as steep and high as a house, as if cut
out with a knife, overhung the river. I stopped short, and could have
seized the tops of the larches with my hands, but there was no path. I
went back two steps, and leant on a tree, and now my mind was easier. I
saw running water. God be praised and blessed for all His mercies! this
is the valley, and to have reached the valley is to have reached home.
How pleasant was the rushing of water to my ears--so calm, so peaceful,
so homelike! even seeing and hearing it quenched my thirst. I now
accomplished the greatest feat of the whole, when, a