im the one candle we now had alight, when
I gave utterance to a cry of despair; for the linen band which had
crossed my breast, and supported the wallet, had been worn through by
the constant climbing, and I suppose must have broken when I was making
this last ascent. At all events, the wallet was gone--plunged, I
expect, into the torrent, and bearing with it the flint, steel,
tinder-box, and matches; so that, should any accident befall our one
light, we should be in the horrible darkness of the place.

"Never mind, Mas'r Harry," said Tom. "It ain't no use crying after
spilt milk. Up you go, sir."

With failing heart and knitted brow I exerted myself, climbed to Tom's
hips, as he clung to the rock and lighted me; then to his shoulders;
stood there for a moment trembling, and then struggled into the cleft,
turned round, lay down in a horrible position, sloping towards the
torrent, with my head two feet lower than my knees, and then stretched
out my hands to Tom.

"Can't reach, Mas'r Harry," he said, after one or two despairing trials.
"You'll have to go and leave me. See if you can get out and fetch
help."

For a moment I felt stunned at this unforeseen termination of our
efforts, for there really had seemed hope now, unless this fresh passage
should prove too narrow to let us pass.

I did not answer Tom, but drew myself up again to think; when, taking
off my coat, I rolled it round and round, laid fast hold of the collar,
and then, once more lying down, I lowered the coat to Tom.

"Can you reach that?" I said.

"No, Mas'r Harry--not by a foot," said Tom gloomily, his words being
shouted, as the roar of the torrent beneath us swept his voice away.

He stood in a position of awful peril: a false step, and he would be
plunged into the torrent; and as I looked down at his upturned face and
the flickering candle, I wondered how I could have ever dared to stand
there myself.

"Can you reach it now?" I said, lowering myself a little more.

But his answer came in a dull, muffled, despairing monotone:

"No."

I wriggled and shuffled my body a little more forward, forcing my boot
toes into a crevice as I did so, for it seemed that now the slightest
strain would draw me over the precipice. But there was no other
resource: Tom must have help; and I lay shivering there as, with an
upward spring, the candle between his teeth, Tom clutched my coat, I
shuddering the while, and wondering whether the cloth would giv