It seemed an insanity, but there was nothing else to be done, so, fixing my heels in a niche, I grasped them and slowly he slid forward till his body vanished to the middle.  What he saw does not matter, for I saw it all afterwards, but what happened was that suddenly all his great weight came upon my arms with such a jerk that his ankles were torn from my grip.

Or, who knows! perhaps in my terror I loosed them, obeying the natural impulse which prompts a man to save his own life.  If so, may I be forgiven, but had I held on, I must have been jerked into the abyss.  Then the rope ran out and remained taut.

“Leo!” I screamed, “Leo!” and I heard a muffled voice saying, as I thought, “Come.”  What it really said was—­“Don’t come.”  But indeed—­and may it go to my credit—­I did not pause to think, but face outwards, just as I was sitting, began to slide and scramble down the ice.

In two seconds I had reached the curve, in three I was over it.  Beneath was what I can only describe as a great icicle broken off short, and separated from the cliff by about four yards of space.  This icicle was not more than fifteen feet in length and sloped outwards, so that my descent was not sheer.  Moreover, at the end of it the trickling of water, or some such accident, had worn away the ice, leaving a little ledge as broad, perhaps, as a man’s hand.  There were roughnesses on the surface below the curve, upon which my clothing caught, also I gripped them desperately with my fingers.  Thus it came about that I slid down quite gently and, my heels landing upon the little ledge, remained almost upright, with outstretched arms—­like a person crucified to a cross of ice.

Then I saw everything, and the sight curdled the blood within my veins.  Hanging to the rope, four or five feet below the broken point, was Leo, out of reach of it, and out of reach of the cliff; as he hung turning slowly round and round, much as—­for in a dreadful, inconsequent fashion the absurd similarity struck me even then—­a joint turns before the fire.  Below yawned the black gulf, and at the bottom of it, far, far beneath, appeared a faint, white sheet of snow.  That is what I saw.

Think of it!  Think of it!  I crucified upon the ice, my heels resting upon a little ledge; my fingers grasping excrescences on which a bird could scarcely have found a foothold; round and below me dizzy space.  To climb back whence I came was impossible, to stir even was impossible, since one slip and I must be gone.

And below me, hung like a spider to its cord, Leo turning slowly round and round!

I could see that rope of green hide stretch beneath his weight and the double knots in it slip and tighten, and I remember wondering which would give first, the hide or the knots, or whether it would hold till he dropped from the noose limb by limb.

Oh!  I have been in many a perilous place, I who sprang from the Swaying Stone to the point of the Trembling Spur, and missed my aim, but never, never in such a one as this.  Agony took hold of me; a cold sweat burst from every pore.  I could feel it running down my face like tears; my hair bristled upon my head.  And below, in utter silence, Leo turned round and round, and each time he turned his up-cast eyes met mine with a look that was horrible to see.