426 The Bearded Vulture 
my heart | unbent the portion round my shoulder and proceeded 
gingerly to ease up the two half hitches which secured it to the 
canvas sling in which I was suspended, paying out the line through 
the thimbles on the sling as I slipped downwards. Arrived at the 
last few inches, I found my feet were still over 6 ft. from the 
ground, but there was no help for it and | let all go and dropped, 
landing amid the rocks and scrub shaken and exhausted but 
unhurt. But all the same it was a very near calculation! I now 
whistled to ‘Haul up” and as | saw the free end of my 13-in. 
rope curling about as it went out of view high overhead, | congratu- 
iated myself on my escape from a most awkward position. 
I subsequently heard that the lowering party who, by the way, 
had nearly perished of cold in their airy situation, were greatly 
alarmed at suddenly finding themselves hauling up a loose rope, 
since they had no idea of where | had got to and imagined untold 
horrors. 
Before closing this painful story of failure and defeat I must 
explain when and where my rope jambed and how it came about 
that | was able to get out of my fix so well. After I left Farquhar 
on the terrace above the “artichoke” crag he had acted as fugle- 
man, receiving my whistles and signalling on their purport to the 
lowering party perched high above him. As he paid out the rope 
after I disappeared from his view over the ‘‘artichoke”’ cliff, the 
knot joining the 13-in. and 1$-in. rope passed him in due course. 
It was whilst he was “handing” me down the vertical cliff that 
the rope in running over the edge bit in deeply between the uptilted 
strata near the “artichoke” and the miserable knot jambed! At 
the moment I was rather over 60 ft. below this point and Farquhar 
was over 20 ft. above it. Luckily, realizing the grave danger, he 
at once came down the intervening cliff on the rope, hand-over- 
hand, and reaching the extreme edge managed somehow to lift 
the knot clear. This was the jerk I felt! 
