ut it," he said, and jerked his head sideways.

James walked with him a little way. "What's all this mystery?" he
asked.

"I wonder if you know what you are doing," Urquhart said; "I wonder if
you know what this means. Do you know, for instance, that I don't care
a damn whether I break my neck or not, and on the whole would rather
that you did than didn't? You ought to know it. But I'm asking you."

James kept his eyeglass to his eye. "I think you are talking
nonsense," he said, "but I don't suppose you intend it for nonsense.
You inspire me to say, taking you on your face value, that I shall try
the first cornice. If it's a forty-foot drop, we ought to have rope
enough."

Urquhart peered at him. "You mean what you say?"

"Certainly I do." Urquhart turned on his heel.

"All right," he said, and went over to the other two.

"Macartney and I are going down," he said to Lingen. "I don't at all
blame you for going back, but I'll trouble you to see that this man
does the needful to-morrow. The needful is to come out here as early
as he can get over the ground, to see if we want him. He had better
fire a gun, or shout. If we are alive we shall answer him. If we don't
answer, he had better see about it. I don't want to scare you, but
this is not a joke, and I can't afford to be misunderstood. Now I'm
going to tell him all that in his own lingo."

Lingen took it very badly; but said nothing. Urquhart spoke vehemently
to the guide, who raised his staff and appeared to be testifying to
Heaven. He handed over the rope, the shovel, and the kit with an air
of Pilate washing his hands.

"Now," Urquhart said to James, "we'll rope, and see if we can cut some
steps through this thing. I've seen that done." James, dropping his
eyeglass, said that he was in his hands. Everybody was quiet, but they
were all in a hurry.

Lingen came up to say good-bye. He was very much distressed, nearly
crying. The guide, on the other hand, was chafing to be off. "If that
chap calls himself a guide," said Urquhart, "he ought to be shot." The
guide thereupon threw up his hands with a gesture of despair. Lingen
said that he couldn't possibly go until he had seen them down. The
guide, who was sullen and nervous, remained to help them. Even that
seemed to be against his convictions.

They fixed one of the stocks in a crevasse; Urquhart roped. Then he
went forward to the edge, or what seemed to be the edge, and having
crawled on his belly so far a