ter
faintly gleamed; and my heart so throbbed within me as I took the bar in
my hands, with the knowledge that should I lose hold of it death waited
for me below in those dark shadows, that my breath came irregularly and
I heard a dismal ringing in my ears. Yet I had less to fear than either
of the others who had crossed before me, for the ropes still were fast
to the chain; and should I not swing far enough I would be helped to
safety by my companions. But for shame, I should have made my body fast
to the chain by a rope sling, and so have gone across as our stores had
gone rather than as a man. But my pride forbade my surrender in this
fashion to my fears; and it was a lucky thing for me that it did.

Holding the bar in my hands, I ran briskly across the ledge, and, with a
strong kick on the edge of the cliff to give me additional impetus, I
went spinning out into space. For an age, as it seemed to me, I sank
rapidly; while that horrible feeling possessed me--the like of which
people subject to sea-sickness feel as the ship drops away beneath them
into the trough of the sea--of falling away from my own stomach. And
then, just as my strength seemed to be failing, and my hold on the bar
loosing, I perceived that I was rising again; and this put a little
fresh heart in me, and I tightened my grip on the bar. Ten seconds, no
doubt, was the full extent of the time that my passage consumed; but it
seemed to me then, and it seems to me still as I think of it, a long ten
years. And a thrill of terror goes through me as I think also of how
near I then came to a horrible death; for at the very moment that I
reached the farther side of the canon there was a little tinkling sound
in the air above me, and the bar that I held was twitched out of my
hands, and then came a loud jingling of metal on rock, and as I turned
quickly I saw a gleam of sunlight catch the great chain as it went
twisting downward into the black gulf below.

XV.

THE TEMPLE IN THE CLOUDS.

Doubtless the violent strain to which the chain had been subjected by El
Sabio's kicking and plunging had loosened the fastenings, centuries old,
which held it to the rock; for the chain had not broken, but had come
away entire. I sank down on the rock as weak with terror as the poor ass
had been; and like him I drank greedily of water, and panted for a
while, and at last found my courage coming back to me.

Yet my case was a happy one compared with that of Fray