She gazed at them with wonder and affright, for, notwithstanding the beating of the elements (which seeming to find their breasts of iron and their feet armed with some preternatural adhesion to the cliff), they continued to bear resolutely onward.

Fortunately, they did not now labor against the wind.

Sometimes they pressed forward on the level edge of the rock; then a yawning chasm forced them to leap from cliff to cliff, or to spring on some more elevated projection.

Thus, contending with the vortex and the storm, they at last arrived at the doubling of Cuthonrock,** the point that was to clear them of this minor Corie Vrekin.

But at that crisis the rope which Wallace held broke, and, with the shock, he fell backward into the sea.