After that Jerry had no way of knowing where the car was except by means
of the cable. This he watched keenly as it glided around the drum.
"Three hundred feet," he breathed to himself, as the cable markings went
by, "three hundred and fifty, four hundred; four hundred and----"

The cable had stopped. Jerry threw off the brake, but it did not move.
He caught the cable with his hands and tried to start it by tugging
smartly. Something had gone wrong. What? He could not guess; he could
not see. Looking up, he could vaguely make out the empty car, which had
been crossing from the opposite cliff at a speed equal to that of the
loaded car. It was about two hundred and fifty feet away. That meant, he
knew, that somewhere in the gray obscurity, two hundred feet above the
river and two hundred and fifty feet from the other bank, Spillane and
his wife were suspended and stationary.

Three times Jerry shouted with all the shrill force of his lungs, but no
answering cry came out of the storm. It was impossible for him to hear
them or to make himself heard. As he stood for a moment, thinking
rapidly, the flying clouds seemed to thin and lift. He caught a brief
glimpse of the swollen Sacramento beneath, and a briefer glimpse of the
car and the man and woman. Then the clouds descended thicker than ever.

The boy examined the drum closely, and found nothing the matter with it.
Evidently it was the drum on the other side that had gone wrong. He was
appalled at the thought of the man and woman out there in the midst of
the storm, hanging over the abyss, rocking back and forth in the frail
car and ignorant of what was taking place on shore. And he did not like
to think of their hanging there while he went round by the Yellow Dragon
cable to the other drum.