ndering it difficult for us to
maintain our footing, until suddenly, as we reached an angle of the wall
of rock where we had expected it to widen, we perceived to our
consternation, that a yard or two farther on it abruptly terminated at a
place we could not possibly hope to pass.

Toby, as usual, led the van, and in silence I waited to learn from him how
he proposed to extricate us from this new difficulty.

"Well, my boy," I exclaimed, after the expiration of several minutes,
during which time my companion had not uttered a word: "what's to be done
now?"

He replied in a tranquil tone that probably the best thing we could do in
the present strait was to get out of it as soon as possible.

"Yes, my dear Toby, but tell me _how_ we are to get out of it."

"Something in this sort of style," he replied; and at the same moment, to
my horror, he slipped sideways off the rock, and, as I then thought, by
good fortune merely, alighted among the spreading branches of a species of
palm tree, that shooting its hardy roots along a ledge below, curved its
trunk upwards into the air, and presented a thick mass of foliage about
twenty feet below the spot where we had thus suddenly been brought to a
stand-still. I voluntarily held my breath, expecting to see the form of my
companion, after being sustained for a moment by the branches of the tree,
sink through their frail support, and fall headlong to the bottom. To my
surprise and joy, however, he recovered himself, and disentangling his
limbs from the fractured branches, he peered out from his leafy bed, and
shouted lustily, "Come on, my hearty, there is no other alternative!" and
with this he ducked beneath the foliage, and slipping down the trunk,
stood in a moment at least fifty feet beneath me, upon the broad shelf of
rock from which sprung the tree he had descended.

What would I not have given at that moment to have been by his side? The
feat he had just accomplished seemed little less than miraculous, and I
could hardly credit the evidence of my senses when I saw the wide distance
that a single daring act had so suddenly placed between us.

Toby's animating "come on!" again sounded in my ears, and dreading to lose
all confidence in myself if I remained meditating upon the step, I once
more gazed down to assure myself of the relative bearing of the tree and
my own position, and then closing my eyes and uttering one comprehensive
ejaculation of prayer, I inclined myself ove