It sounds rather French, but as a fact I was taking my
last farewell of a man whom I could not have loved more if he had been
my own son twice over.
"Good-bye, my boy," I said, "I hope that we shall meet again, wherever
it is that we go to."
The fact was I did not expect to live another two minutes.
Next I retreated to the far side of the rock, and waited till one of the
chopping gusts of wind got behind me, and then I ran the length of the
huge stone, some three or four and thirty feet, and sprang wildly out
into the dizzy air. Oh! the sickening terrors that I felt as I launched
myself at that little point of rock, and the horrible sense of despair
that shot through my brain as I realised that I had _jumped short!_ but
so it was, my feet never touched the point, they went down into space,
only my hands and body came in contact with it. I gripped at it with
a yell, but one hand slipped, and I swung right round, holding by the
other, so that I faced the stone from which I had sprung.
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