ill he was at the full stretch of his
limbs, when a horrible thought occurred to him: suppose, when he jumped
down upon that broad shelf formed by a sliding of the rock till it was
checked by some inequality, his weight should be sufficient to start it
going again, and he should be carried with it backward into the gulf.

"What nonsense!" he thought; "why, my weight upon it will be no more
than that of a fly;" and he lowered himself a little more, found it
harder, moved to the right, and got on to a firm ledge, and from that to
another, and was soon half-way down.

There he came to a stop, for he could find neither foot nor hand hold;
and there he was at last, spread-eagled against the perpendicular rock,
unable to go down, and, upon determining to go up instead, utterly
unable to retrace his steps.

"Oh, this is absurd," he thought, and looking sidewise, he saw a little
projection which seemed as if it would do then, feeling that if he
stopped longer in his cramped position he would be less able to act, he
measured the distance with his eyes, gathered himself together, made a
clumsy spring, got a foot on the projection, but missed the crevice into
which he meant to thrust his right hand, and went scrambling and sliding
down the other five-and-twenty feet, to come into a sitting position on
the broken stones, scratched, bruised, and uttering a loud groan of
pain.

"Oh my bones!" he cried, with a laugh and a wince of pain, as he began
to rub himself; and then, as he looked up, a sudden chill struck him,
for, he said to himself:

"Why, it's like a trap. I can never get up there again. I ought to
have looked farther before I leaped."

He limped a little as he stood up, and his arms both required a rub,
especially about the elbows; but while he performed these little
comforting offices he was not idle, for he carefully inspected the
shelf. Escape on the one side did not seem possible, for it was over
into the gorge; the other side, a curve, was one nearly perpendicular
wall of rock, along which he walked from where he stood to the ends at
the edge of the precipice and back.

"It is a regular pitfall," thought Nic; and then, determined to make the
best of things, he lay down upon his chest over the clear murmuring
water, lowered his lips, and took a long, deep, delicious draught of the
sparkling fluid.

"That's refreshing," said the boy to himself, and he came to a sitting
position on the warm stone, took out hi