He grasped blindly, desperately.

He felt something firm! It was another palm branch that his fingers reached as he dug through the mud.

He held on with the clutch of despair.
His head just reached a hole in the roof.

He missed his grasp, and fell back on the swinging, broken palm branch.

With one final, cracking sound it parted! Timokles' one hand grasped the top of the wall; his other hand reached the outer part of the roof.