"I did it, Omar," I cried breathlessly. "It was an accident. I could not avoid it, and nearly fell, too."
But it was apparent that my voice did not reach him, for he slowly lowered himself over the next projection, and continued giving directions to the men who followed, while I, with the next ledge fallen away, was compelled to let myself drop a distance of about nine feet on to one that seemed far below.
From that point the descent became much easier, although during the two hours it occupied I stumbled and nearly lost my foothold many times. My feet and hands were covered with blood, my elbows were severely grazed, and from my knees the skin was torn by the constant scrambling over the edges of the ledges.
Truly the approach to the Land of the Great White Queen was fraught with a myriad dangers.
When about half-way down the steep rock another piercing shriek broke forth immediately below me, and glancing down I saw one of our black companions who had dropped from one ledge to the next lose his footing, stumble, and fall headlong into the great chasm. Cries of horror escaped us as we saw him strike a rugged ledge of rock far below, rebound, and then fall head foremost to the rock's base, his skull already battered to a pulp.
This terrible lesson was heeded by everyone, and for fully half an hour the silence was almost complete, save for the gasps and hard breathing of our followers as they toiled onward down the steep face of the gigantic rock.
Someone cried out that here, as across the quicksands, there were a thousand steps. If this were true, as I believe it was, then the average distance between the ledges being about five feet, the height of the rock was somewhere about five thousand feet. When progress at last became easier, I tried to attract Omar's attention, and inquire whether we should have to scale the rock opposite, but I could not project my voice far enough below to reach him. When he shouted I could hear, as his voice ascended, but he apparently could not distinguish what I said in reply.
Kona, his bow and empty quiver slung behind him, scrambled down after me ever nimble as a cat. His black skin shone like ebony, but here and there were cuts from which blood freely flowed, showing that he too, although inured to a savage life, had not altogether escaped in this struggle to enter the land unknown.