438 
DESPERATE LEAP. 
a trusty servant, to hold the rope at the top. While the 
hoy was dangling midway between sky and water, the 
servant, who was unused to his situation, whether owing to 
a sudden dizziness from looking downward on the hoy’s 
motions, or misgivings as to his own powers of holding him 
up, felt a cold, sickly shivering creep over him, accompanied 
with a certainty that he was about to faint ; the inevitable 
consequence of which, he had sense enough left to know, 
would he the certain death of the hoy, and, in all probability, 
of himself, as in the act of fainting it was most likely he 
would fall forward, and follow the rope and hoy down the 
precipice. In this dilemma, he uttered a loud, despairing 
scream, which was fortunately heard by a woman working 
in an adjoining field, who, running up, was just in time 
to catch the rope, as the fainting man fell senseless at her 
feet. 
We shall add two more, equally hazardous and one fatal. 
Many bird-catchers go on these expeditions without any 
companion to hold the rope or assist them. It was on 
such a solitary excursion, that a man, having fastened his 
rope to a stake on the top, let himself down far below ; and, 
in his ardour for collecting birds and eggs, followed the 
course of a ledge, beneath a mass of overhanging rock : 
unfortunately he had omitted to take the usual precaution 
of tying the rope round his body, hut held it carelessly in 
his hand; when, in a luckless moment, as he was busily 
engaged in pillaging a nest, it slipped from his grasp, and 
after swinging backwards and forwards three or four times, 
without coming within reach, at last became stationary over 
the ledge of the projecting rock, leaving the bird-catcher 
apparently without a chance of escape, — for to ascend the 
precipice without a rope was impossible, and none were 
near to hear his cries, or afford him help. What was to he 
done ? Death stared him in the face. After a few minutes’ 
pause, he made up his mind. By a desperate leap he might 
regain the rope, hut if he failed, and, at the distance at 
which it hung, the chances were against him, his fate was 
certain, amidst the pointed crags ready to receive him, over 
