I had in mind an experience in the Alps several years before, while touring Europe, and it occurred to me that it might be of some use to follow some of the tactics adopted by my Alpine guide. He carried a long rope, and when my party came to a particularly perilous pathway, alongside a gorge thousands of feet deep, he tied the rope to each of us, so that we appeared like so many knots in it, one a dozen feet, perhaps, from the other. It was hardly possible that one would fall and drag all down with him. If one of the party lost his footing, the worst that could happen to him would be a bad fright from dangling between the sky and the almost bottomless gorge, it all ending in being dragged to safety again. “I believe that we can find some rope, and in some such way help ourselves out of this predicament,” I said, in making a further explanation of my plan. “There must be rope about the stables in the village. Now, what say you to the idea?” “Anything to get out of this beastly cold,” Mark answered. “To get out of this I’d go to ----” “Never mind where, Mark,” I laughed, despite the gravity of our situation. “Well, I’m an iceberg and no mistake, George; and I want to go anywhere to find a place that will thaw things.” We hustled among several stables in the neighborhood, and soon had two clothes-lines and three pairs of horse reins. Then back to the bridge we went, where in a few minutes we’d rigged up a cable that seemed strong enough to withstand the strain to which we would put it. I said I’d make the first attempt to cross, so tied one end of the cable to a bridge stay and the other around my body close under the arms. The cable was about seventy feet in length, long enough, I reckoned, to let me get to the other side of the skeleton work. If the cable was exhausted before I got over, then I would have to return. That was the alternative. When ready to start, I fastened the treasure satchel to Mark’s back, and told him to remain at the cable stay, and do the best he could for me, in case I slipped from the planks and fell through the skeleton work. If he could pull me to the bridge again, why, all right; if not, well--I shivered at the prospect of dangling in the air hundreds of feet above the dark river. “If I should fall through, Mark,” I said to him, “and you can’t get me back, just cut the rope. I guess that will end me. Anyway, it will be better than being suspended in the air and freezing to death.” “Don’t talk like a fool!” he said, in a sort of shivering voice, I thought; “if you think it so serious as that, you shouldn’t start.” “Well, in case anything should happen, Mark, old boy, I’ll say good-by.”