rd, to stop
appalled, for Jack was before me clinging to a thin sapling which he had
caught as he fell, and this had bent like a fishing-rod, letting him
down some ten feet below the edge of an awful precipice, the more
terrible from the fact that the river seemed to be rushing straight out
into the air from a narrow ravine high upon our right, and to plunge
down into a vast rocky basin quite a couple of hundred feet below.

As I caught sight of Jack Penny's face with its imploring eyes I was for
the moment paralysed. He had tight hold of the tree, which was only
about half the thickness of his own thin wrists, and he was swaying up
and down, the weight of his body still playing upon the elastic sapling.

"I can't hold on long, Joe Carstairs," he said hoarsely. "I'm such a
weight; but I say I ain't a bit afraid, only do be quick."

The doctor had crept to my side now, and he reached out his hand to
grasp Jack, but could not get hold of him by a couple of feet.

"Can't you reach?" the poor fellow gasped.

"No, not yet," the doctor said sharply; and his voice seemed quite
changed as he took in the position; and I saw him shudder as he noted,
as I had done, that if Jack fell it would be into the foaming basin
where the water thundered down.

"Be quick, please," panted Jack. "I can't do nothing at all; and I
don't--think--I could swim--down there."

"Don't look down," roared the doctor, though even then his voice sounded
smothered and low.

Jack raised his eyes to ours directly, and I seemed to feel that but for
this he would have been so unnerved that he would have loosed his hold.

"Now," cried the doctor, "the tree's too weak for you to cling to it
with your legs. Swing them to and fro till we catch hold of you."

Jack looked at me with a face like ashes; but he obeyed, and it was
horrible to see the sapling bend and play like a cart-whip with the
weight upon it. Each moment I expected it to snap in two or give way at
the roots; but no: it held fast, and Jack swung to and fro, and danced
up and down over the awful gulf till he was within our reach.

"Now!" shouted the doctor to me. "Both together."

I did as he did, clutched at Jack's legs as they swung up to us; held
on; and then we threw ourselves back, dragging with all our might.

"Let go! let go!" roared the doctor to Jack.

"I daren't, not yet," he cried, with his head hidden from us, that and
his body being over the gulf, while we had his legs