t of downward
movement was slowly and painfully accomplished, and then Mildmay (who
was now leading the way) found himself within a foot or two of the lower
edge of an almost perpendicular slope overhanging an awful abyss of
unfathomable depth, his further progress downward being barred by the
fact that beneath him the rock sloped _inwards_! A single downward
glance sufficed not only to reveal to him his appalling situation, but
also to wring from his lips such a piercing cry of horror as effectually
warned his friends from following him any further. Then he pressed his
body close to the face of the rock, and clung there convulsively with
feet and hands to the trifling irregularities of surface which alone
afforded him a hold, his blood curdling and his brain reeling at the
thought of the horrible deadly danger which menaced him. A single slip
of hand or foot, a momentary failure of a muscle, the slightest seizure
of cramp or vertigo, and he would go whirling headlong downward at least
five hundred feet sheer through the air before reaching the ground
below. He was so unnerved that he was actually incapable of replying to
the colonel's anxious hail as to what was the matter.

It was whilst he stood thus vainly striving to recover his self-
control--a growing conviction of the impossibility of escape meanwhile
forcing itself with momentarily increasing intensity upon him--that a
huge moving mass suddenly swung into view round a projection on his
left, and a simultaneous cry of surprise from his two waiting and
wondering companions told that they too had caught sight of it. It was
the _Flying Fish_ slowly drifting round the mountain, stern on, and that
too so closely that her propeller actually touched the rocky projection,
some thirty feet off, as she passed it. The force of the contact,
though very gentle, was sufficient to give her a slight outward impulse;
and though she continued to drift round toward the rock to which the
adventurers were clinging, it appeared as though she would pass it at
such a distance as would _just_ preclude the possibility of their
reaching her.

"We must shout," exclaimed Mildmay, finding his voice all at once; "we
must shout to George. Perhaps our cries may reach him and bring him on
deck, in which event we shall be able to tell him what to do."

And shout they did, simultaneously, and at the full power of their
lungs; but it was of no avail--George and the cook were both at that