"You must," I remember saying with inappropriate facetiousness--"you must, Job, it's as easy as catching flies." I suppose that I must have said it to satisfy my conscience, because although the expression conveys a wonderful idea of facility, as a matter of fact I know no more difficult operation in the whole world than catching flies--that is, in warm weather, unless, indeed, it is catching mosquitoes.
"I can't, sir--I can't, indeed."
"Let the man come, or let him stop and perish there. See, the light is dying! In a moment it will be gone!" said Ayesha.
I looked. She was right. The sun was passing below the level of the hole or cleft in the precipice through which the ray reached us.
"If you stop there, Job, you will die alone," I called; "the light is going."
"Come, be a man, Job," roared Leo; "it's quite easy."
Thus adjured, the miserable Job, with a most awful yell, precipitated himself face downwards on the plank--he did not dare, small blame to him, to try to walk it, and commenced to draw himself across in little jerks, his poor legs hanging down on either side into the nothingness beneath.
His violent jerks at the frail board made the great stone, which was only balanced on a few inches of rock, oscillate in a most dreadful manner, and, to make matters worse, when he was half-way across the flying ray of lurid light suddenly went out, just as though a lamp had been extinguished in a curtained room, leaving the whole howling wilderness of air black with darkness.
"Come on, Job, for God's sake!" I shouted in an agony of fear, while the stone, gathering motion with every swing, rocked so violently that it was difficult to hang on to it. It was a truly awful position.
"Lord have mercy on me!" cried poor Job from the darkness. "Oh, the plank's slipping!" and I heard a violent struggle, and thought that he was gone.
But at that moment his outstretched hand, clasping in agony at the air, met my own, and I hauled--ah, how I did haul, putting out all the strength that it has pleased Providence to give me in such abundance--and to my joy in another minute Job was gasping on the rock beside me. But the plank! I felt it slip, and heard it knock against a projecting knob of rock, and it was gone.
"Great heavens!" I exclaimed. "How are we going to get back?"
"I don't know," answered Leo, out of the gloom. "'Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof,' I am thankful enough to be here."