With that I stepped on the plank and, bending to my knees, began my journey over the slippery planking, with the storm raging about me. Far below was the roaring river I could hear but not see. Suddenly it occurred to me that I had not agreed with Mark on a code of signals. I dared not turn round, so cried out to him, that if I got over all right, I would pull the cable three times. In that case he was to fasten the cable about him and return to me a similar indication of his readiness for the journey. Then I would fasten the cable to a stay at my end of the bridge, and notify him by the same signal to come over. I called back another good-by, which he answered. The wind swept through the thousands of strings of the great skeleton bridge, rendering wild, weird music, it seemed to me; and at times, as I struggled along the treacherous planks, I imagined that the wires were of a prodigious harp, designed to give forth melancholy and discouragement, and that ten thousand demons were at the strings in a mad struggle to achieve my undoing. Again, so mournful was the sweep of the wind, that I could, in my terrible position, fancy my ears laden with the weight of my funeral song. I wished with all my heart that it would cease, that I might better work out my exemption from death, but it persisted in beating on, occasionally threatening to dislodge me by a sudden and more terrifying evidence of its unlimited energy. I had been creeping along inch by inch, and it seemed to me that I must have been on the way an hour, before I had covered a score of feet, when I paused to catch my breath, which had been almost driven from my body by a fierce shock of wind. And, too, I was compelled to clutch at the planking with all the strength left me, that I might not be hurled below as far as my cable would permit. When the wind relented, I called out to Mark, but no response came, the sound of my voice, in all probability, having been drowned ere it got ten feet away. I resumed the struggle and had traversed a dozen feet more, when a gust struck me and one hand slipped from the plank. Down I went with a crash that nearly cracked my head on the ice, and I must have gone below, had not my right hand come in contact with a girder, fortunately close by, when I met with the mishap. With this aid I was able to balance myself and regain my place on the plank. I was trembling with fright, and I knew that my forehead, notwithstanding the cold, was wet with perspiration. It was fortunate I was near a girder when this piece of ill-luck came. The girders, as near as I could guess, were five feet apart. Had I been midway of two, I dare not think of what would have been my fate. Without these supports, from time to time, I am certain that I would have been unable to keep to the path.