And now we must think about climbing up." "Aye, that will require a good deal of thinking," Ralph grumbled.
For some time there was silence; then Walter said, "The first thing to do is to cut off the slack of the rope, there are some twelve feet of it.

Then we will unwind the strands of that.

There are five or six large strands as far as I can feel; we will cut them up into lengths of about a couple of feet and we ought to be able to tie these to the rope in such a way as not to slip down with our weight.

If we tie them four feet apart we can go up step by step; I don't see much difficulty about that." "No," Ralph said much more cheerfully, "I should think that we could manage that." They at once set to work.

The rope was cut up and unravelled, and the strands cut into pieces about two feet long.