and he reached out for the next handhold. It did not exist.

He fumbled and groped across the smooth face above him. He stretched to reach the lip so near him. And then he realized that, near as he was, he could not go farther. Already his bleeding hands refused to hold beyond the next few seconds. A foot slipped and in sweating terror he wildly clawed for his hold.

His right hand slipped loose. A red haze of strain covered his vision. One foot came free and the tendons of his right arm were stretched to the snapping point. He knew he was going, knew that he would fall, knew that Morrison would sell an army to the gods of slaughter--His right hand numbed and lost its grip and he started to fall.

There was a wrench which tore muscles and nerves, and something was around his wrist. He was not falling. He was dangling over emptiness and something had him from above!

They pulled him up over the edge and dropped him in an exhausted, broken huddle upon the gravel of the small plateau. And at last, when he opened his eyes, it was to see the grinning face of the intelligence officer and the stolid guards.

"Usually," said the intelligence officer, in an offhand voice, "they make it up and over by tearing a grip out of the cliff with their fingernails. You, however, are of a much more delicate nervous structure, it seems. I rather thought you'd fail where you did. One gets to know these things after some practice."

Captain de Wolf lay where they had dropped him. A dull haze of beaten anger clouded his sight and then dropped away from him and left him naked, filthy and alone among his country's enemies.

Diffidently the guards picked him up and lugged him toward the small buildings. They took him down a corridor and into a large, strange room. Glad to be quit of this, they put him in a chair and strapped his wrists down. Captain de Wolf made no resistance. He did not look up.

The intelligence officer walked gracefully back and forth, slowly touring the room. He stopped and lighted a cigarette. "It was really quite useless, that escape of yours," he said. "Your friend Morrison talked to the limit of his knowledge. He gave us troops, divisions to be used, state of equipment, general battle plan, in fact everything but two small facts which he did not know." He came nearer to De Wolf. "He was not able to recall the time of the attack or the assembly point after it had succeeded--if it did 

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