the impact of the water. Then I began to pull myself slowly up.

I could not do it. If I got my feet on the rock the effort
would bring me too far into the water, and that meant

destruction. I saw this clearly in a second while my wrists were
cracking with the strain. But if I had a wall behind me I could

reach back with one hand and get what we call in Scotland a
'stelf.' I knew there was a wall, but how far I could not judge.

The perpetual hammering of the stream had confused my wits.
It was a horrible moment, but I had to risk it. I knew that if

the wall was too far back I should fall, for I had to let my
weight go till my hand fell on it. Delay would do no good, so

with a prayer I flung my right hand back, while my left hand
clutched the spike.

I found the wall - it was only a foot or two beyond my
reach. With a heave I had my foot on the spike, and turning,

had both hands on the opposite wall. There I stood, straddling
like a Colossus over a waste of white waters, with the cave

floor far below me in the gloom, and my discarded axe lying
close to a splash of Laputa's blood.

The spectacle made me giddy, and I had to move on or fall.
The wall was not quite perpendicular, but as far as I could see

a slope of about sixty degrees. It was ribbed and terraced
pretty fully, but I could see no ledge within reach which

offered standing room. Once more I tried the moral support of
the rope, and as well as I could dropped a noose on the spike

which might hold me if I fell. Then I boldly embarked on a
hand traverse, pulling myself along a little ledge till I was right

in the angle of the fall. Here, happily, the water was shallower
and less violent, and with my legs up to the knees in foam I

managed to scramble into a kind of corner. Now at last I was
on the wall of the gully, and above the cave. I had achieved by

amazing luck one of the most difficult of all mountaineering
operations. I had got out of a cave to the wall above.

My troubles were by no means over, for I found the cliff
most difficult to climb. The great rush of the stream dizzied

my brain, the spray made the rock damp, and the slope
steepened as I advanced. At one overhang my shoulder was

almost in the water again. All this time I was climbing
doggedly, with terror somewhere in my soul, and hope lighting

but a feeble lamp. I was very distrustful of my body, for I
knew that at any moment my weakness might return. The

fever of three days of peril and stress is not allayed by one
night's rest.

By this time I was high enough to see that the river came
out of the ground about fifty feet short of the lip of the gully,

and some ten feet beyond where I stood. Above the hole
whence the waters issued was a loose slope of slabs and screes.

It looked an ugly place, but there I must go, for the rock-wall
I was on was getting unclimbable.

I turned the corner a foot or two above the water, and stood
on a slope of about fifty degrees, running from the parapet of

stone to a line beyond which blue sky appeared. The first step
I took the place began to move. A boulder crashed into the

fall, and tore down into the abyss with a shattering thunder. I
lay flat and clutched desperately at every hold, but I had

loosened an avalanche of earth, and not till my feet were
sprayed by the water did I get a grip of firm rock and check

my descent. All this frightened me horribly, with the kind of
despairing angry fear which I had suffered at Bruderstroom,

when I dreamed that the treasure was lost. I could not bear
the notion of death when I had won so far.

After that I advanced, not by steps, but by inches. I felt
more poised and pinnacled in the void than when I had stood

on the spike of rock, for I had a substantial hold neither for
foot nor hand. It seemed weeks before I made any progress

away from the lip of the waterhole. I dared not look down, but
kept my eyes on the slope before me, searching for any patch

of ground which promised stability. Once I found a scrog of
juniper with firm roots, and this gave me a great lift. A little

further, however, I lit on a bank of screes which slipped with
me to the right, and I lost most of the ground the bush had

gained me. My whole being, I remember, was filled with a
devouring passion to be quit of this gully and all that was in it.

Then, not suddenly as in romances, but after hard striving
and hope long deferred, I found myself on a firm outcrop of

weathered stone. In three strides I was on the edge of the
plateau. Then I began to run, and at the same time to lose the

power of running. I cast one look behind me, and saw a deep
cleft of darkness out of which I had climbed. Down in the cave

it had seemed light enough, but in the clear sunshine of the
top the gorge looked a very pit of shade. For the first and last

time in my life I had vertigo. Fear of falling back, and a mad
craze to do it, made me acutely sick. I managed to stumble a

few steps forward on the mountain turf, and then flung myself
on my face.

When I raised my head I was amazed to find it still early
morning. The dew was yet on the grass, and the sun was not

far up the sky. I had thought that my entry into the cave, my
time in it, and my escape had taken many hours, whereas at

the most they had occupied two. It was little more than dawn,
such a dawn as walks only on the hilltops. Before me was the

shallow vale with its bracken and sweet grass, and farther on
the shining links of the stream, and the loch still grey in the

shadow of the beleaguering hills. Here was a fresh, clean land,
a land for homesteads and orchards and children. All of a

sudden I realized that at last I had come out of savagery.
The burden of the past days slipped from my shoulders. I

felt young again, and cheerful and brave. Behind me was the
black night, and the horrid secrets of darkness. Before me was

my own country, for that loch and that bracken might have
been on a Scotch moor. The fresh scent of the air and the

whole morning mystery put song into my blood. I remembered
that I was not yet twenty.

My first care was to kneel there among the bracken and give
thanks to my Maker, who in very truth had shown me 'His

goodness in the land of the living.'
After a little I went back to the edge of the cliff. There

where the road came out of the bush was the body of
Henriques, lying sprawled on the sand, with two dismounted

riders looking hard at it. I gave a great shout, for in the men I
recognized Aitken and the schoolmaster Wardlaw.

CHAPTER XXII
A GREAT PERIL AND A GREAT SALVATION

I must now take up some of the ragged ends which I have
left behind me. It is not my task, as I have said, to write the

history of the great Rising. That has been done by abler men,
who were at the centre of the business, and had some knowledge

of strategy and tactics; whereas I was only a raw lad who
was privileged by fate to see the start. If I could, I would fain

make an epic of it, and show how the Plains found at all points
the Plateau guarded, how wits overcame numbers, and at every

pass which the natives tried the great guns spoke and the tide
rolled back. Yet I fear it would be an epic without a hero.

There was no leader left when Laputa had gone. There were
months of guerrilla fighting, and then months of reprisals,