he took two more steps, and was in the act of taking another when the foot he lowered touched nothing, and he started so violently that the other foot glided from the smooth bar of wood, and he dropped with a jerk to the full extent of his arms, giving his hands such a sharp snatch that he felt them giving way just as he was hanging suspended over seventy feet above the deck. Then they gave way, for, lately as it had been uttered, he had forgotten the Norseman’s carefully given warning.