Many were moss grown and decayed, with their extremities snapped short off, and those in the immediate vicinity of the fall were slippery with moisture.
Toby's scheme, and it was a desperate one, was to entrust ourselves to these treacherous-looking roots, and by slipping down from one to another to gain the bottom.
'Are you ready to venture it ?' asked Toby, looking at me earnestly but without saying a word as to the practicability of the plan.
'I am,' was my reply; for I saw it was our only resource if we wished to advance, and as for retreating, all thoughts of that sort had been long abandoned.
After I had signified my assent, Toby, without uttering a a single word, crawled along the dripping ledge until he gained a point from whence he could just reach one of the largest of the pendant roots; he shook it--it quivered in his grasp, and when he let it go it twanged in the air like a strong, wire sharply struck.

Satisfied by his scrutiny, my light limbed companion swung himself nimbly upon it, and twisting his legs round it in sailor fashion, slipped down eight or ten feet, where his weight gave it a motion not un-like that of a pendulum.

He could not venture to descend any further; so holding on with one hand, he with the other shook one by one all the slender roots around him, and at last, finding one which he thought trustworthy, shifted him self to it and continued his downward progress.
So far so well; but I could not avoid comparing my heavier frame and disabled condition with his light figure and remarkable activity; but there was no help for it, and in less than a minute's time I was swinging directly over his head.

As soon as his upturned eyes caught a glimpse of me, he exclaimed in his usual dry tone, for the danger did not seem to daunt him in the least, 'Mate, do me the kindness not to fall until I get out of your way;' and then swinging himself more on one side, he continued his descent.

In the mean time I cautiously transferred myself from the limb down which I had been slipping to a couple of others that were near it, deeming two strings to my bow better than one, and taking care to test their strength before I trusted my weight to them.
On arriving towards the end of the second stage in this vertical journey, and shaking the long roots which were round me, to my consternation they snapped off one after another like so many pipe stems, and fell in fragments against the side of the gulf, splashing at last into the waters beneath.
As one after another the treacherous roots yielded to my grasp, and fell into the torrent, my heart sunk within me.