moment in the innermost recesses of the ship busily engaged on their
respective avocations, and in all likelihood profoundly ignorant of the
state of affairs. At all events there was no response, and the ship
went drifting slowly past. She was floating almost level with the
little party clinging there desperately to the face of the naked rock,
the boss of her propeller being at just about the same height as the
colonel's head. As she drove almost imperceptibly along it seemed to
Mildmay that she was also being drawn inward toward the face of the
rock; and he began to ask himself whether an active man might not, after
all, be able to overleap the intervening space and grasp one of the
propeller-blades. The craft was so tantalisingly close that it seemed
to him almost a cowardly thing to let this chance pass; yet, when he
glanced downward at the darkening abyss over which he hung, he
shudderingly confessed to himself that the leap was an impossibility,
and that they must retreat upward with all speed to gain some
comparatively secure spot upon which to pass the night now gathering
about them. He was about to put this thought into words, and to propose
an immediate upward movement, when he turned to take (as he believed) a
last parting glance at the _Flying Fish_, now immediately behind him.
In doing so his fingers slipped and lost their grip upon the rock, and
before he could recover his hold he found himself going over backwards.
He felt that he was lost; but, with the instinct of self-preservation,
turned quickly on his feet, and as they too were slipping off the minute
projections on which he had been supporting himself, he made a vigorous
desperate spring outward from the face of the rock, reaching forward
into space toward the curved end of the propeller-blade which he saw in
front of him. Despair must have leant him extra strength when making
that last awful leap, for, though the distance was fully twenty feet, he
actually reached and succeeded in grasping the end of the blade. To
swing himself up astride upon it was the work of a moment; and then he
paused to rest and recover from this last shock to his nervous system.
Not for long, however; he knew that his companions must be nearly
exhausted, and that their lives now probably depended solely on his
activity and the celerity with which he might be able to go to their
rescue; so he pulled himself together, shouted to them the encouraging
news of his success, a