Eveena had been personally trained in a principle long discarded by Terrestrial women; and not half aware what she did, but yielding instinctively to the habit of compliance with imperative command spoken in a masculine voice, she opened her hands just as I had lost all hope.

With one desperate effort I swung her fairly on to the platform, and, seeing her safe there, fell back myself scarcely more sensible than she was.
The whole of this terrible scene, which it has taken so long to relate, did not occupy more than a minute in action.

I know not whether my readers can understand the full difficulty and danger of the situation.

I know that no words of mine can convey the impression graven into my own memory, never to be effaced or weakened while consciousness remains.

The strongest man on Earth could not have done what I did; could not, lying half over the precipice, have swung a girl of eighteen right out from underneath him, and to his own level.
But Eveena was of slighter, smaller frame than a healthy French girl of twelve, while I retained the full strength of a man adapted to the work of a world where every weight is twice as heavy as on Mars.