The narrow cleft they followed led somewhat away from the exposed front of the precipice, yet arose steep and jagged before them, a slender gash through the solid rock, up which they were often compelled to force their passage; again it became clogged with masses of debris, dead branches, and dislodged fragments of stone, across which they were obliged to struggle desperately, while once they completely halted before a sheer smoothness of rock wall that appeared impassable.

It was bridged finally by a cedar trunk, which Hampton wrenched from out its rocky foothold, and the two crept cautiously forward, to emerge where the sunlight rested golden at the summit.

They sank face downward in the short grass, barely conscious that they had finally won their desperate passage.
Slowly Hampton succeeded in uplifting his tired body and his reeling head, until he could sit partially upright and gaze unsteadily about.
The girl yet remained motionless at his feet, her thick hair, a mass of red gold in the sunshine, completely concealing her face, her slender figure quivering to sobs of utter exhaustion.

Before them stretched the barren plain, brown, desolate, drear, offering in all its wide expanse no hopeful promise of rescue, no slightest suggestion even of water, excepting a fringe of irregular trees, barely discernible against the horizon.

That lorn, deserted waste, shimmering beneath the sun-rays, the heat waves already becoming manifest above the rock-strewn surface, presented a most depressing spectacle.