s some feet or more above my head and it touched me not.
Presently I began to sit up and wonder where I was and what had happened
and what had become of the others. I felt very stiff and wet and dirty,
and my right knee ached more than I liked. I was just on the point of
staggering to my feet and feeling my way to leveller ground, when quite
close to me I heard something very like a moan. I dropped on my knees at
that and put out a tremulous hand. My fingers touched something soft and
cold, and then I realised that it was a human face--Moira's, judging by
the tangle of hair. I put my hand under the head and raised it up. A
heavy mass of loose hair fell damply about my arm, and I knew then that
it was my sweetheart I held. She stirred a little and moaned again. I
was in a quandary. Clearly something must be done, but how or what I
could no more say that I could fly. The night and the storm had
swallowed Cumshaw up for the time being, but, beyond wondering vaguely
what had become of him, I never gave him a thought. All my life long I'd
been too used to men taking care of themselves to worry myself much
about my missing colleague. But Moira's case was insistent and called
for immediate attention. If there had been any shelter handy, even the
rudest of bark humpies, I would have known what to do, and, what is
more, I would have done it on the instant. Obviously the only course I
could take was to crawl in under the ledge or precipice, or whatever it
was, down which we had fallen and trust to the overhang--if there was
any--and the few bushes that I had crashed through as I spun down, to
keep the worst of the rain off us.

Accordingly I rose to my feet and lifted Moira up in my arms. She was a
greater weight than I had thought, and that and my own condition caused
me to walk with the uneven steps of a drunken man. At last I found some
sort of recess in the side of the slope--I came across it more by
accident than of set purpose--and there I crouched with Moira between me
and the wall. The rain whirled in on me, and, if possible, I got a
trifle wetter than before, but I had the satisfaction of knowing that my
body kept both the rain and the wind away from her. It was a tedious
enough job, holding the unconscious girl in my arms, and more than once
I felt like dropping her, only that I recollected in time that I was
crouching ankle deep in mud. I am stronger than the average, and I have
had my body trained in hard schools, but