This settled me; it is better to fall down a precipice and die than be laughed at by such a woman; so I clenched my teeth, and in another instant I was on that horrible, narrow, bending plank, with bottomless space beneath and around me.  I have always hated a great height, but never before did I realise the full horrors of which such a position is capable.  Oh, the sickening sensation of that yielding board resting on the two moving supports.  I grew dizzy, and thought that I must fall; my spine crept; it seemed to me that I was falling, and my delight at finding myself sprawling upon that stone, which rose and fell beneath me like a boat in a swell, cannot be expressed in words.  All I know is that briefly, but earnestly enough, I thanked Providence for preserving me so far.

Then came Leo’s turn, and though he looked rather queer, he came across like a rope-dancer.  Ayesha stretched out her hand to clasp his own, and I heard her say, “Bravely done, my love—­bravely done!  The old Greek spirit lives in thee yet!”

And now only poor Job remained on the farther side of the gulf.  He crept up to the plank, and yelled out, “I can’t do it, sir.  I shall fall into that beastly place.”

“You must,” I remember saying with inappropriate facetiousness—­“you must, Job, it’s as easy as catching flies.”  I suppose that I must have said it to satisfy my conscience, because although the expression conveys a wonderful idea of facility, as a matter of fact I know no more difficult operation in the whole world than catching flies—­that is, in warm weather, unless, indeed, it is catching mosquitoes.

“I can’t, sir—­I can’t, indeed.”

“Let the man come, or let him stop and perish there.  See, the light is dying!  In a moment it will be gone!” said Ayesha.

I looked.  She was right.  The sun was passing below the level of the hole or cleft in the precipice through which the ray reached us.

“If you stop there, Job, you will die alone,” I called; “the light is going.”

“Come, be a man, Job,” roared Leo; “it’s quite easy.”

Thus adjured, the miserable Job, with a most awful yell, precipitated himself face downwards on the plank—­he did not dare, small blame to him, to try to walk it, and commenced to draw himself across in little jerks, his poor legs hanging down on either side into the nothingness beneath.

His violent jerks at the frail board made the great stone, which was only balanced on a few inches of rock, oscillate in a most dreadful manner, and, to make matters worse, when he was half-way across the flying ray of lurid light suddenly went out, just as though a lamp had been extinguished in a curtained room, leaving the whole howling wilderness of air black with darkness.

“Come on, Job, for God’s sake!” I shouted in an agony of fear, while the stone, gathering motion with every swing, rocked so violently that it was difficult to hang on to it.  It was a truly awful position.