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 pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.s 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 a.s.sailed 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 sc.r.a.ped 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, pa.s.sing 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.
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX.
For the moment Archy Raystoke was puzzled--completely taken aback. This was something upon which he had not counted; and he stood there looking up, as he saw the boy descending with a far greater show of activity than he could have displayed.
Naturally, the first thought was of further flight, but he had already convinced himself that he was again a prisoner, and as, after another glance down at the ledge below to his left, he looked up at Ram, he set his teeth, and laughed in a way that did not promise well for his pursuer.
"What is he coming down for?" he said to himself, as his teeth began to set fast and his hands involuntarily to clench. "Does he think he is going to drag me up there again? He had better not try."
Meanwhile Ram was descending rapidly, and sending little amba.s.sadors down before him in the shape of pieces of rock and shale, all of which arrived at the ledge in a very inimical way, bounding off, scattering in fragments, or falling with a heavy thud.
From time to time Ram looked down at his escaped prisoner, and then devoted himself to the places where he should never plant his feet, achieving the whole in the most fearless manner, and finishing with a leap which landed him near where Archy stood gazing at him, regularly at bay.
Ram did not hesitate an instant, but dashed at the midshipman to seize him by the jacket, but Archy was on his mettle, and he struck out sharply, a blow in the chest and another in the right shoulder, sending the young smuggler staggering back.
"Oh, that"s it, is it?" cried Ram furiously. "I give you one more chance, though--will you give in, and come back quietly?"