Presently she found it, and then another.
Slowly, with cut and bleeding hands, she made her way down. Half way,
perhaps, she grasped a little bush which seemed to spring securely from
the cliff and held tightly to this until she could grasp another jutting
point of rock and then another bush, until at last, with a great sobbing
sigh, she found her feet planted on what seemed sure ground. It was the
trunks and the outspreading branches of the same pine trees which held
Seagreave. She took a second to draw a long breath, and then, holding
cautiously to a little branch, she bent over him.
With infinite tenderness she attempted to straighten out one leg which
was doubled beneath him, but he moaned and sighed so that she desisted,
seeing from the limp way that it lay that it was broken. He had
evidently fallen on his back; and like a dagger zig-zagging its way
through her heart was the thought, "What if that, too, were broken?"
Oh, how should they get him up without injuring him further and cruelly
hurting him with the ropes. And he must be so cold. She shivered herself
in the damp, icy air of this ravine. She called up to Mrs. Nitschkan to
swing down to her her long cape, which she had discarded before
beginning her climb. The gypsy did so carefully, but just as she let the
end of it go a gust of wind swept it in slow circles down the ravine.
Mrs. Nitschkan uttered more or less profane exclamations of disgust; but
Pearl said nothing. After her first feeling of intense disappointment,
a new idea had come to her, and she hastened to act upon
it.
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