he precipice. His hand had found a knob
of projecting feldspar and he was feeling with his right foot for a
hold in some moss that grew in a crevice. He had none of the tools for
climbing--no rope, no hatchet, none of the support of numbers. All the
allies he could summon were his bare hands and feet, his resilient
muscles, and his stout heart. To make it worse, the ice film from the
rain coated every jutting inch of quartz with danger.

But he worked steadily forward, moving with the infinite caution of
one who knows that there will be no chance to remedy later any mistake.
A slight error in judgment, the failure in response of any one of fifty
muscles, would send him plunging down.

Occasionally he spoke to Sheba, but she volunteered no remarks. It was
her part to wait and watch while he concentrated every faculty upon his
task. He had come to an impasse after crossing a dozen feet of the wall
and was working up to get around a slab of granite which protruded, a
convex barrier, from the surface of the cliff. It struck the girl that
from a distance he must look like a fly on a pane of glass. Even to her,
close as she was, that smooth rock surface looked impossible.

Her eye left him for an instant to sweep the gulf below. She gave a
little cry, ran to his coat, and began to wave it. For the first time
since Elliot had begun the traverse she took the initiative in speech.

"I see some people away over to the left, Mr. Elliot. I'm going to call
to them." Her voice throbbed with hope.

But it was not her shouts or his, which would not have carried one tenth
the distance, that reached the group in the valley. One of them caught a
glimpse of the wildly waving coat. There was a consultation and two or
three fluttered handkerchiefs in response. Presently they moved on.

Sheba could not believe her eyes. "They're not leaving us surely?" she
gasped.

"That's what they're doing," answered Gordon grimly. "They think we're
calling to them out of vanity to show them where we climbed."

"Oh!" She strangled a sob in her throat. Her heart was weighted as with
lead.

"I'm going to make it. I think I see my way from here," her companion
called across to her. "A fault runs to the foot of the stairway, if I
can only do the next yard or two."

He did them, by throwing caution to the winds. An icy, rounded boulder
projected above him out of reach. He unfastened his belt again and put
the shoes, tied by the laces, around his neck.