Ferdy and the car! Good God, what had happened to them? The sweat poured off me like rain when the truth came back. Ferdy was over there, down that awful precipice. Quaking in every limb, I dragged myself to the edge and looked over. Yes, I could see the car, looking like a little toy thing, far down in the valley. It lay wheels upwards, in what appeared to be a little brook or river; but of my comrade not a sign anywhere. In vain I shouted his name again and again. The cars began to pass me, and, warned by my presence, they took that awful corner safely; but not a man of their drivers guessed that a good fellow had gone over, and that I was half mad because of it. Away they went, with a nod and a shout, leaving that cold silence of the mountains behind them, and Lal Britten crying like a woman because they didn't stay. In the end I ceased to think of them at all, and, going to the brink again, I shouted "Ferdinand" until the hills rang. * * * * * He answered me--as I am a living man--Ferdinand answered me at last. At first I could believe so little in the truth of what I heard that I almost thought the mountains were mocking me and sending my voice back in echoes. Then I understood that it was not so at all, but that my friend really called to me from a place thirty or forty yards down the road, where the scrub was thicker. It was the spot where our tank and tool-box, cast ahead as the car swerved and went over, lay shattered on the rocks. These I hardly noticed at the moment; but, dashing to the place, I threw myself flat on my face and hung right over the precipice to answer my comrade. And then, in an instant I knew what had happened--then I understood. The car, I say, had swerved away to the right as she took the precipice. The tremendous force of it not only sent all our loose impedimenta flying down the road, which turned to the left, but it threw Ferdinand sideways; and, although he had gone over, he fell, as the newspapers have told you, just where the sheer wall bulged; and here, holding for dear life to the shrubs, he waited for me to save him. Such a torture I have never known, or shall know again. The sight of my friend, not ten feet away from me, the precipice forbidding me to go down, for it was quite sheer at the top; his white face, his desperate hold at the scrappy shrubs--oh, you can't imagine or think of the truth of it as I had to upon that awful morning. "How long can you hold on?" I asked him, clenching my teeth when I had spoken. "Perhaps a minute, perhaps two. If you could get a rope, Lal----" "I'll stop a car," said I--a madder thing was never said, but I had to say something--"I'll stop a car and make them help me. Perhaps my shirt will do it, Ferdy." "Good-bye if it doesn't," he said quite quietly; and I knew then that he was prepared for death, and had expected it; but I was already busy with my shirt, tearing it up with twitching fingers, when he spoke again.