Chapter 25

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_ CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE.

The midshipman drew in a long breath of the salt air, as he stood at the opening in the cliff face. He tightened his belt, drew his red cap down on his head, wished that his hands were not so sore, and muttered the words, "Now for liberty!" He began to creep through the hole till his head was well out, and he could look round for enemies.

There was not one. The only thing that he could see was a gull sailing round and round between him and the sea, down to his right.

And now, for the first time, it struck him that the gull looked very small, and from that by degrees he began to realise that the hole out of which he had thrust his head was fully four hundred feet above where the waves broke, and that it must be two hundred more to the top of the cliff.

It looked more perilous too than it had seemed before, but the lad was in nowise daunted. The way was open to him to climb up or lower himself down apparently, but he chose the former way of escape, knowing as he did how very little at the base of the cliffs was left bare even in the lowest tides, and that if he got down he would either have to swim or to sit perched upon a shelf of rock till some boat came and picked him off.

There was no cutter in view, but he did not trouble about that. He stopped only to gaze down at the dazzling blue sea, and thought that if it came to the worst he could leap right off into deep water, and then he drew himself right out on to a rugged ledge, a few inches in width, and stood holding on by the stones round the opening, looking upward for the best way to get up.

"Don't seem easy," he said cheerily, "but every foot climbed will be one less to get up. So, here goes."

As he ceased speaking he drew a deep breath, and then feeling that safety depended upon his being firm, cool, and deliberate, he made his way from the mouth of the hole along the ledge upon which he stood, till he found a spot where he could ascend higher.

It was necessary that he should find such a spot, for the ledge had grown narrower and in another yard died completely away. So, raising his hands to their full extent, he found a place for one foot, then for the other, repeated the experiment, and was just going to draw himself up to a ledge similar to that which he had just left, when one foot slipped from the stone upon which it rested, and had the lad lost his nerve he must have fallen headlong.

But he held on tightly, waited a minute to let the jarring sensation pass away, depending upon his hands and one foot. Then calmly searching about he found firm foothold, raised himself, and the next moment he was on the green ledge.

"Wouldn't have done to tumble," he said with a hall laugh. "Fall's one thing, a dive another. I suppose the water's pretty deep down there."

The ledge he was now on was fully a foot wide, and the refuse and fish bones with which it was strewn told plainly enough that in the spring time it was the resting--perhaps nesting--place of the sea-birds which swarmed along the coast.

As he stood facing the rock he found directly that he could not get any farther to his right, and a little search proved that from this ledge he could get no higher, not even had he been provided with a ladder. Even if a rope had been lowered down to him from the top of the cliff, it would have been of no avail, for he realised now that which he could not see from the hole by which he had escaped, to wit, that the cliff projected above the opening, and a lowered down rope would have hung several feet right away clear.

"Get farther along," he said coolly; and he edged himself slowly along, taking hold of every prominence he found to steady himself, and passing cautiously along the rough ledge over the hole, and then onward for forty or fifty feet, where a rift ran upward, and, by cautious climbing, he mounted slowly till he was on a fresh ledge, a few feet above which was another rift, and he climbed again, to come to a depression or niche, where he stopped to rest.

"No occasion to hurry," he said to himself, and as there was plenty of room he sat down and gazed out to sea, noting a sail far away to the right, but the vessel was a schooner--it was not that which he sought.

He was apparently cool enough, but his pulses beat more rapidly than was consistent with the exertion through which he had gone, and being after a few minutes eager now to get his task at an end, he tried to the left, to find no way up there, to the right, but everywhere the rock was perpendicular, and offered no foothold; or else sloped outward, and concealed what was above.

He tried again and again, hoping against hope, but without result.

"Must be a way up," he said, evidently considering that there must be because he wanted it, and he took tightly hold of a rough corner and leaned out a little to gaze upward, to find, in whichever direction he looked, right or left, there was nothing but rugged limestone, which had been splintered and moulded by time till there was not a spot where the most venturesome climber could obtain foothold; in fact, above him he could not see a spot where even the sea-birds had been in the habit of finding a resting-place.

It was for liberty, and naturally enough the midshipman made no superficial search. His next plan was to lie flat down in the niche he had made his temporary resting-place, lean over, and try and map out a course by which he could descend a little way and then pass along for a distance, and resume his climb upward with better chances of success.

But no; he could see no sign to help him, and, as a keen sense of disappointment assailed him that he should have got so near liberty and have to give up, he decided that the way to freedom was downward.

And now, as he looked over the edge of the shelf on which he lay, it struck him for the first time that it was a very terrible descent, and, turning his eyes away, he looked up again for a way there.

All in vain. He was fully a hundred and twenty feet from the top of the huge cliff, and, half afraid now that he should be quite afraid, he determined to lose no time, and, going to the spot where he had crept on to the niche floor, he began to lower himself slowly down.

"Be a good thing," he said to himself, as he searched with his feet and made sure of his footing, "if one could leave all one's thoughts behind at a time like this, or only keep enough to think where to put one's feet."

"Glad I haven't got on my uniform," he said a few moments later, as his breast scraped over the rough rock.

Soon after,--

"Oh, how sore my hands are! That's better."

He was back in safety on the ledge over the hole, and, passing along, he had soon descended to the one beneath the exit.

"Now then," he said, as he paused for a few minutes before commencing his descent; "this will be easier."

Somehow he did not feel in any hurry to begin, and he sat down with his legs hanging over the ledge, to give his nerves time to calm down, for there was a strong tendency to throb about his pulses, and he was not sufficiently conversant with the house he lived in, to know that confinement, worry, want of fresh air, and excessive work during the past few days had not given him what the doctors call "tone."

So he sat there with his back to the rock, gazing out to sea again, and then watching the graceful curves made by a gull, which had risen higher and higher, and came nearer and nearer, till it was on a level with him, and watching him curiously.

"Wonder whether you think I am going to fall and let you have a pick at me," said Archy, with a forced laugh; "because I am not going to tumble, so you can be off."

All the same, though, he shuddered, and he had to exercise a little force to make his new start downward.

"Best way after all," he said, as he began to descend. "If you go up, it gets more dangerous every minute, because you have farther to fall. If you go down, it gets safer, because you have less."

He found the way now comparatively easy, for the rock sloped a little out, and he had even got down some sixty feet when he had a check.

"I don't know, though," he said, as he put a bleeding knuckle to his lips. "Don't make much difference, I should think, whether you fall one hundred feet or five. Bother! I wish I did not keep on thinking about tumbling."

He forced himself to study the next part of his descent, which was nearly perpendicular, but well broken up with ledges and cracks which offered good holding, and terminated a hundred feet below, upon a shelf, which naturally offered itself as his next resting-place, but beyond which it was impossible to see.

"Don't matter," he said more cheerfully. "Let's take difficulties a bit at a time. I'm free, and I can laugh at them now. I could jump into deep water and swim, if there were no way down from below there."

His spirits rose now, for, though a false step or slip of the foot would have sent him headlong down to the broad ledge, from which he would in all probability have bounded into the sea, the climbing was good, and, panting with the exertion, he got from projection to ledge, now straight down, now diagonally, and often along first one tiny ledge or cornice and then another, zig-zagging, till, at about twenty feet from the place he was making for, a slaty piece of the limestone rock by which he was holding parted, frost-loosened, from the parent rock, and he went down with a rush.

But it was only a slide. He alighted on his feet, and, scratched and startled a bit, stood panting and trying to recover his composure.

"No harm done," he said, as he looked up to where the hole from which he had escaped was beginning to look quite small. "Might have been worse. Quite bad enough, though. Shakes one so. Now for a rest, and then down again."

He stepped to the edge and looked over in the middle, next to the left, then to the right, and always with the same result. He was now on a regular sea-birds' sanctuary, for the rock below him was not perpendicular; but sloped right under, and, try as he would, he could devise no plan for getting down lower, save by taking a header into the sea, where the water looked black and deep to his right, while to his left there was the chasm upon which, twenty feet or so out of the perpendicular line, was the hole from which he had come.

Heights of sea-cliffs are very deceptive, and slopes which look to the inexperienced eye only a hundred feet or so to the top, are often more than double. It was so here, for, in spite of the distance he had come down, the midshipman found that he must be fully two hundred feet above the sea.

"Oh, how vexatious!" he cried, as he ground his teeth. "After all that work, after being so sure, to be out here on this wretched shelf like an old cormorant, but without any wings."

"I don't care," he said aloud, after again and again convincing himself that there was no possible means of farther descent. "I won't go back to prison; I'll sit here and starve first. Not I," he added, after a few moments' thought; "the cutter will be sure to sail by, and they could see me if I made signals from just here."

Rather doubtful, as he knew, for he was only at the corner of the chasm or tiny gulf into which the sea rushed, and the chances were that unless he had something big and white to wave, he was not likely to get his signal seen.

For one moment only the recollection of the food he had left behind tempted him to return.

"I might get it, and bring the basket down," he said. "No, I won't try it again; it's too dangerous. I don't want another slip. Besides, there must be a way down farther, if I could find it. Of course! I knew it!" he cried, as he gazed over once more, farther in toward the head of the little chasm, which looked as though the rock had been split from top to bottom.

He rubbed his hands, for some thirty feet below there was certainly a narrow possible place, and from there perhaps another might be found.

"If one could get down," he said to himself; but it did not look possible; the rock was out even of the perpendicular, and no sane person would attempt to drop from the edge so great a distance as that.

At that moment a piece of slaty rock came sliding down from on high, to fall with a crash and splinter on the rock at his feet.

"Must have loosened that," he said; "good job I didn't get it on my head. Oh!"

It was a cry of rage as much as of alarm, for there, following his track exactly, was Ram, who had returned repentant, alone, with his basket, to miss his prisoner, search, find the opening, and without hesitation to come down the cliff in pursuit. _

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