"Helen!" I cried--"Helen! if you are here, answer me. I cannot see you." A gull flew away from the cliff with a scream, and I could hear no other sound. "Tell me, Helen, if you are here."
I heard a cry from above--almost inaudible it was so spiritless and faint--yet, gaze as I might toward the top, I could see nothing. I skirted the main rock and climbed as far as I easily could up the ravine. Here my attention was arrested by a dot of scarlet against the grim, bare face of the basalt. Yes, there she was, about forty feet above me, hanging on to a shelving rock with her little Italian greyhound in her arms. She was peering down, disclosing a pallid face. I saw at once that she had hung there until her strength was almost gone.
"Listen to me, Helen," said I, calmly and very gently, for I had a ghastly dread that she would fall before my very eyes. "Don't look down: just keep your eyes fixed on the rock, and hold on tight until I reach you." She obeyed me. "Now," I went on authoritatively, "drop the dog--drop him, I say!--Here, Beppo! here!"
She again obeyed me, and the dog scrambled down and fell--scratched and bruised, no doubt, yet otherwise unhurt--at my feet. "Helen, answer me one question," said I. "Can you wait until I go round up to the top and get a rope?"
She gave a little scream of pitiful anguish: I saw her slight figure sway, and some loose stones came rattling down. "I feel so sick, so dizzy!" she cried.
"I will climb up, then. Hold on tight for a few minutes more. Keep perfectly still, and don't look down: you know how well I can climb."
I was a capital climber, and could hold on like a cat where there was a crevice to fasten my feet or my hands. Still, I was anything but certain about these hollow, worn sides, which in places were as smooth as glass. But it had to be done, and done quickly. If the child fell she was dead or maimed to a certainty. She had crawled in some unheard-of way down from the top, and must go back the way she had come; and since I had no time to help her from above, I must go up to her. A spar had been washed up among the débris upon which I had mounted, and this helped me up a little way. Then I managed to creep a trifle farther, hand over hand: whenever I could take breath I called out to her that it was all right and I should be up in another minute. The necessity of keeping up her courage endowed me with miraculous strength, and in a little while I stood beside Helen on the narrow shelf, and waited for a moment to breathe freely and see what was yet beyond me. I smiled at her, and she looked steadily into my face, but said not a word.