und that Blake had already
lowered the bundle of spikes over the cliff below and was reenforcing
with a spike a picket-pin that he had driven deep into a crevice.

"Drop over the chain at that point," curtly ordered the engineer.
"Think you can climb back up this slope without the rope?"

"Yes," answered Ashton, still more curtly.

Blake lifted the line and sent up it a wave that carried to the upper
end and flipped the loop from the spike-head. He jerked the freed end
down to him and knotted it securely to the picket-pin, while Ashton
was making the third vertical measurement. He then lowered everything
except the level in loops of the line, and wrapped a strip of canvas
around the line where it bent over the sharp edge of the cliff.

Ashton laconically reported the measurement. Blake noted it in his
book, and promptly swung himself out over the edge of the cliff.
Again his assistant looked at the fastening of the rope; again he
looked upwards at the three tiny down-peering faces; and again he
followed his leader. The sun was glaring directly down into the gorge.
Later they would descend into the shadows where no eye could perceive
from above the loosening of the rope.

Blake cut off the line at the foot of the cliff and left it dangling.
They would require it for their ascent. Another Titan step took fifty
feet more of the rope.

There followed a series of steep pitches, which they descended like
the first, unlooping the rope from spike-head after spike-head. The
only real difficulty of this part of the descent was the tedious task
of carrying the vertical measurement down the slopes at places where
even Blake could not find footing to climb out horizontally on either
wall of the gorge to obtain a clear drop.

Always, as they descended, the engineer scanned the rocks both above
and below, calculating where the gorge bottom could be reascended
without a line. Whenever he considered the incline too smooth or too
steep for safe footing, he drove in spikes near enough together to be
successively lassoed from below with a length of line.

Had not the nature and condition of the rock provided frequent faults
and crevices that permitted the driving of spikes, the descent must
soon have become impracticable. But the engineer invariably found
some chink in which to hammer a spike with his powerful blows. As,
time after time, he overcame difficulties so great that his companion
could perceive no possible solution, Asht