It will be remembered that when Ayesha was standing on the spur, before we crossed to the stone, the wind tore her cloak from her, and whirled it away into the darkness of the gulf, we could not see whither.  Well—­I hardly like to tell the story; it is so strange.  As we lay there upon the rocking-stone, this very cloak came floating out of the black space, like a memory from the dead, and fell on Leo—­so that it covered him nearly from head to foot.  We could not at first make out what it was, but soon discovered by its feel, and then poor Leo, for the first time, gave way, and I heard him sobbing there upon the stone.  No doubt the cloak had been caught upon some pinnacle of the cliff, and was thence blown hither by a chance gust; but still, it was a most curious and touching incident.

Shortly after this, suddenly, without the slightest previous warning, the great red knife of light came stabbing the darkness through and through—­struck the swaying stone on which we were, and rested its sharp point upon the spur opposite.

“Now for it,” said Leo, “now or never.”

We rose and stretched ourselves, and looked at the cloud-wreaths stained the colour of blood by that red ray as they tore through the sickening depths beneath, and then at the empty space between the swaying stone and the quivering rock, and, in our hearts, despaired, and prepared for death.  Surely we could not clear it—­desperate though we were.

“Who is to go first?” said I.

“Do you, old fellow,” answered Leo.  “I will sit upon the other side of the stone to steady it.  You must take as much run as you can, and jump high; and God have mercy on us, say I.”

I acquiesced with a nod, and then I did a thing I had never done since Leo was a little boy.  I turned and put my arm round him, and kissed him on the forehead.  It sounds rather French, but as a fact I was taking my last farewell of a man whom I could not have loved more if he had been my own son twice over.

“Good-bye, my boy,” I said, “I hope that we shall meet again, wherever it is that we go to.”

The fact was I did not expect to live another two minutes.

Next I retreated to the far side of the rock, and waited till one of the chopping gusts of wind got behind me, and then I ran the length of the huge stone, some three or four and thirty feet, and sprang wildly out into the dizzy air.  Oh! the sickening terrors that I felt as I launched myself at that little point of rock, and the horrible sense of despair that shot through my brain as I realised that I had jumped short! but so it was, my feet never touched the point, they went down into space, only my hands and body came in contact with it.  I gripped at it with a yell, but one hand slipped, and I swung right round, holding by the other, so that I faced the stone from which I had sprung.  Wildly I stretched up with my left hand, and this time managed to grasp a knob of rock, and there I hung in the fierce red light,