for escape.

I should think that I ran nearly two miles at full speed, and kept well
ahead of my pursuers. Indeed, I had distanced them considerably; but
feeling that I could not hold out long at such a killing pace, I pulled
up a little, and allowed them to gain on me slightly. I was just about
to resume my full speed, and, if possible, throw them at once far
behind, when my foot was caught by a thorny shrub, and I fell headlong
to the ground. I was completely stunned for a moment or two, and lay
quite motionless. But my consciousness suddenly returned, accompanied
by a feeling of imminent danger, which caused me to spring up and renew
my headlong career. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw that the two
natives had gained so much on me that had I lain a few seconds longer I
must inevitably have been captured.

I exerted myself now beyond my powers. My head, too, from the shock I
had received, became confused, and I scarce knew whither I was going.
Presently a loud, dull roar, as if of distant thunder, struck upon my
ear, and I beheld what appeared to me to be a vast white plain covered
with mist before. Next moment I found myself on the brink of a
precipice of a hundred feet deep, over which, a little to my left, a
large river fell, and thundered down into a dark abyss, whence issued
those clouds of spray which I had taken for a white plain in the
confusion of my brain and vision.

I made a desperate effort to check myself, but it was too late. My
heels broke off the earthy edge of the cliff, and I obtained just one
awful glance of the horrid turmoil directly below me as I fell over with
a mass of debris. I uttered an involuntary shriek of agony, and flung
my arms wildly out. My hand clutched the branch of an overhanging bush.
This, slight though it was, was the means, under God, of saving my
life. The branch broke off, but it checked my fall, and at the same
time swung me into the centre of a tree which projected out from the
cliff almost horizontally. Through this tree I went crashing with
fearful violence, until I was arrested by my chest striking against a
stout branch. This I clutched with the tenacity of despair, and
wriggling myself, as it were, along it, wound my arms and legs round it,
and held on for some time with the utmost fervour of muscular energy.

My position now was beyond conception horrible. I shut my eyes and
prayed earnestly for help. Presently I opened them, and in the position
i