“God help him!” cried Nigel in sudden alarm, “the ledge has been carried away and he cannot advance!  Stay by the boat, Moses, I will run to help him!”

“No, Massa Nadgel,” returned the negro, “I go to die wid ’im.  Boat kin look arter itself.”

He sprang on shore as he spoke, and dashed up the mountain-side like a hunted hare.

Our hero looked at Winnie for an instant in hesitation.

“Go!” said the poor girl.  “You know I can manage a boat—­quick!”

Another moment and Nigel was following in the track of the negro.  They gained the broken ledge together, and then found that the space between the point which they had reached and the spot on which the hermit stood was a smooth face of perpendicular rock—­an absolutely impassable gulf!

Van der Kemp was standing with his back flat against the precipice and his feet resting on a little piece of projecting rock not more than three inches wide.  This was all that lay between him and the hideous depth below, for Nigel found on carefully drawing nearer that the avalanche had been more extensive than was apparent from below, and that the ledge beyond the hermit had been also carried away—­thus cutting off his retreat as well as his advance.

“I can make no effort to help myself,” said Van der Kemp in a low but calm voice, when our hero’s foot rested on the last projecting point that he could gain, and found that with the utmost reach of his arm he could not get within six inches of his friend’s outstretched hand.  Besides, Nigel himself stood on so narrow a ledge, and against so steep a cliff, that he could not have acted with his wonted power even if the hand could have been grasped.  Moses stood immediately behind Nigel, where the ledge was broader and where a shallow recess in the rock enabled him to stand with comparative ease.  The poor fellow seemed to realise the situation more fully than his companion, for despair was written on every feature of his expressive face.

“What is to be done?” said Nigel, looking back.

“De boat-rope,” suggested the negro.

“Useless,” said Van der Kemp, in a voice as calm and steady as if he were in perfect safety, though the unusual pallor of his grave countenance showed that he was fully alive to the terrible situation.  “I am resting on little more than my heels, and the strain is almost too much for me even now.  I could not hold on till you went to the boat and returned.  No, it seems to be God’s will—­and,” added he humbly, “His will be done.”

“O God, send us help!” cried Nigel in an agony of feeling that he could not master.

“If I had better foothold I might spring towards you and catch hold of you,” said the hermit, “but I cannot spring off my heels.  Besides, I doubt if you could bear my weight.”

“Try, try!” cried Nigel, eagerly extending his hand.  “Don’t fear for my strength—­I’ve got plenty of it, thank God! and see, I have my right arm wedged into a crevice so firmly that nothing could haul it out.”