“Yes,” said Jimmy, “he might perish!  He might perish!  And it would be my fault!”

The thought brought a cold perspiration to Jimmy’s forehead, and a cold, unnatural feeling to his spine, and in desperation he tried the line again.  But it was useless effort.  He could not pull it up.  And again he ran to the cliff, crawled out and peered over at the dangling and by no means silent Bobby.

“Hey there, Jimmy!  Pull me up!  Hurry!” shouted Bobby.

“I can’t!  I can’t budge you!  Oh, Bobby, what are we going to do?”

“If you can’t pull me up, let me down!” Bobby was growing impatient.  “I can’t stand this much longer.  The line is cutting me in two.”

“Try to climb up the line,” suggested Jimmy, the idea striking him as a bright one.  “Just climb up, and when you get up here where I can reach you I’ll pull you over.”

Bobby tried the experiment, but the line was oily, and in spite of his best efforts he could climb only a little way, when he would slide back again.

“I can’t do it,” he shouted up to Jimmy, after several vain efforts.  “The line is too greasy.  I can’t get a good hold.”

“I don’t know what to do!” said the distressed Jimmy.  “I don’t know what to do!”

“If you can’t pull me up, let me down,” directed Bobby.

[Illustration:  “Hurry, Jimmy.  I can’t hang here much longer.  I’m getting all numb”]

“That won’t do any good,” said Jimmy.  “You’ll only go into the water and drown, for there’s no place for you to stand.”

“Well,” Bobby insisted, “let me down nearer the water.  I feel all the time as though the line was going to break, and I’m so high up from it that it makes me dizzy swinging around this way.”

“Holler when you want me to stop,” shouted Jimmy, rising and running back.

But Jimmy found that after all he could let Bobby down only a very little way when he came to the end of the line.  So he fastened it again.

“That’s as far as it will go!” he called, lying down on his face again to look over the cliff at Bobby, who was now about twenty feet above the water.

“Then go and get the boat and fetch it down,” shouted Bobby.  “Hurry, Jimmy.  I can’t hang here much longer.  I’m getting all numb.”

That was a solution of the difficulty that had not occurred to Jimmy, and without delay he ran away along the cliff top and down to the skiff, which was lying a half mile above, and, undoing the painter, rowed with all his might toward Bobby, until presently he drew up directly beneath the swinging lad.

“Can you unfasten the line and drop into the boat, Bobby?” he asked, gazing up.

“No,” decided Bobby, glancing at the skiff, which rose and fell on the swell, and which Jimmy was holding dangerously near the breaking waves on the cliff base.  “I might hit the boat but I’d break my neck, and maybe tip you over.  Stand her off a little, and I’ll show you.”