I needed a hand when I reached the end of that leafy seesaw. I was much
heavier than the boy, and the limb could hardly support my weight when I
neared the end. Holman reached out his hand at a moment when I thought
that a drop through the air would be my reward for attempting aerial
exhibitions, and the next moment I was beside him on a little projection
that barely gave us a footing.

"It's easy climbing just above us," whispered Holman. "Wait till we get
Kaipi."

The Fijian came along the limb with the agility of a trapeze artist, and
when he reached the ledge we stared up at the dizzy heights that rose
above our little resting place. Small jutting projections, like
gargoyles, stuck out from the wall, and we looked at them hungrily.

"If we had only brought the rope!" cried the boy. "Say, Verslun, put
your face against the rock and I'll climb on to your shoulders."

I did so, and the youngster climbed up cautiously. For a long time he
stood there, peering around in an effort to discover a path by which we
could go upward and onward, but at last he stepped off, and I looked up
to find him clinging to the wall like a huge beetle. A pack of fat
clouds that had harried the moon during the earlier part of the evening
now closed in upon her, and we were in complete darkness. The threshing
limb of the maupei tree that was within a yard or two of the spot where
Kaipi and I stood waiting disappeared in the night, and the scratching
of Holman's shoes high above our heads came down to us through the
intense silence and proved that he was holding his position with
difficulty.