too
strong for such a purpose. Moreover, the clips upon them would render
the paying out over the cliff edge exceedingly awkward; still, since it
seemed that the choice lay between risking his life and ruining his
professional prospects, he chose the former, and set about making his
preparations for what he could not help regarding as a distinctly
hazardous experiment. These did not occupy him very long, and in about
twenty minutes he was standing at the cliff edge, with a padded bight of
the rope about his body, and the two joined ranging-rods in his hand,
quite ready to be lowered down the face. Then two peons whom he had
specially selected for the task, drew in the slack of the rope, passed a
complete turn of it round an iron bar driven deep into a rock crevice,
and waited for the command of a third who now laid himself prone on the
ground, with his head projecting over the edge of the cliff, to watch
and regulate the descent. Then Harry, fully realising, perhaps for the
first time, the perilous nature of the enterprise, laid himself down and
carefully lowered himself over the rocky edge.

"Lower gently, brothers!" ordered the man who was supervising the
operation, and the rope was carefully eased away until the first five-
foot mark reached the cliff edge, while Butler, who now also began at
last to recognise and appreciate the ghastly peril to which his
obstinacy had consigned a fellow creature, moved off to a point about a
hundred yards distant, from which he could watch the entire descent.
And he no sooner reached it than he perceived that Harry's objections to
the plan were well grounded, and that, even with the two joined rods, it
would be impossible for the lad to take the required measurements over
more than the first quarter of the depth. This being the case, it was
obviously his duty at once to put a stop to so dangerous an attempt,
especially as he knew perfectly well that it was as unnecessary as it
was dangerous; but to do this would have been tantamount to confessing
that he had made a mistake, and this his nature was too mean and petty
to permit, so he simply sat down and watched in an ever-growing fever of
anxiety lest anything untoward should happen for which he could be
blamed.

Meanwhile, at the very first stoppage, Harry began to experience some of
the difficulties that beset him in the task which he had undertaken.
Despite the utmost care in lowering, the rope would persist in
oscillating