er
steep ascent, broken by shelves of rock and masses which seemed to be
ready to crumble down upon their heads.

Each man felt as if he ought to shout the lad's name, and ask him to
give some token of his whereabouts, but no one dared open his lips for
the dread of the answer to the calls being only the echoes from the
rocks above, while beneath there was the dull, hurrying roar of the
torrent which rose and fell, seeming to fill the air with a curious
hissing sound, and making the earth vibrate beneath their feet.

They were separating, with the tension of pain upon their minds seeming
more than they could bear, when, all at once, from far above, there was
a cry which made them start and gaze upward.

"Ahoy-y-oy!"

There was nothing visible, and they remained perfectly silent--
listening, and feeling that they must have been mistaken; but just then
a stone came bounding down, to fall some fifty feet in front, right on
to a mass of rock, and split into a score of fragments.

Then again:

"Ahoy! Where are you all?"

"Lawrence, ahoy!" shouted the professor, with his hands to his mouth.

"Ahoy!" came again from directly overhead. "Here. How am I to get
down?"

All started back as far as they could to gaze upward, and then remained
silent, too much overcome by their emotion to speak, for there, perched
up at least a thousand feet above them, stood Lawrence in an opening
among the trees, right upon a shelf of rock. They could see his horse's
head beside him, and the feeling of awe and wonder at the escape had an
effect upon the party below as if they had been stunned.

"How--am--I--to--get--down?" shouted Lawrence again.

Yussuf started out of his trance and answered:

"Stay where you are. I will try and climb up."

"All right," cried Lawrence from his eyrie.

"Are you hurt, my boy?" cried Mr Preston; and his voice was repeated
from the face of the rock on the other side.

"No, not much," came back faintly, for the boy's voice was lost in the
immensity of the place around.

"We will come to you," cried the professor, and he began to follow
Yussuf, who was going forward to find the end of the mass of rock wall,
and try to discover some way of reaching the shelf where the boy was
standing with his horse.

"Are you coming too, effendi?" said Yussuf at the end of a few minutes'
walking.

"Yes," said the professor. "You will wait here, will you not, Burne?"

"Of course I shall--not," said the old l