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 the
car and the man and woman. Then the clouds descended thicker than ever.

The boy examined the drum closely, and found nothing the matter with it.
Evidently it was the drum on the other side that had gone wrong. He was
appalled at thought of the man and woman out there in the midst of the
storm, hanging over the abyss, rocking back and forth in the frail car
and ignorant of what was taking place on shore. And he did not like to
think of their hanging there while he went round by the Yellow Dragon
cable to the other drum.

But he remembered a block and tackle in the tool-house, and ran and
brought it. They were double blocks, and he murmured aloud, "A purchase
of four," as he made the tackle fast to the endless cable. Then he
heaved upon it, heaved until it seemed that his arms were being drawn
out from their sockets and that his shoulder muscles would be ripped
asunder. Yet the cable did not budge. Nothing remained but to cross over
to the other side.

He was already soaking wet, so he did not mind the rain as he ran over
the trail to the Yellow Dragon. The storm was with him, and it was easy
going, although there was no Hall at the other end of it to man the
brake for him and regulate the speed of the car. This he did for
himself, however, by means of a stout rope, which he passed, with a
turn, round the stationary cable.

As the full force of the wind struck him in mid-air, swaying the cable
and whistling and roaring past it, and rocking and careening the car, he
appreciated more fully w