WORKING THE ANIMAS 127 
I had left. Above remained some fifty feet of rim- 
rock, almost perpendicular, but not difficult to ne- 
gotiate provided one kept a cool head. Yet just 
here, with the long climb almost over, a thoughtless 
moment brought me as close, I think, to sudden death 
as I have ever knowingly been. 
I was two-thirds up the rampart of rock, resting 
on a little ledge some eight inches wide and clasp- 
ing with both arms a pillar of stone whose pointed 
top stretched two feet above my head. It seemed 
firm enough for my purpose, which was to pull my- 
self up on this until I had gained a crevice, just 
above, that promised to make the rest easy. As a 
rule we always tested the stability of a support be- 
fore trusting our entire weight to it, for in a great 
many instances the fault, a peculiarity of formation, 
splits a slab from the main body so that a touch or 
a pull will dislodge it. But this time, careless with 
the thought of imminent success, I quite neglected 
such precautionary measures. 
I reached above, grasped the top of the oblong 
rock and with a sharp heave raised myself with my 
arms. As I did so the supposedly solid mass gave 
with my weight. For an empty moment I felt my- 
self falling backward. There was no time to cal- 
culate. By a lucky instinct I glanced to the right, 
spied what seemed to be a narrow foothold a few 
feet away and leapt for it. 
It held! And as I clung there, suspended above , 
the abyss, I heard the great block I had dislodged a 
