I
Crouched behind the boulder, Kit listened.
Surely they must hear his heart! It was thumping so that he took his hand off the boulder before him lest it should betray him by its shaking.
Black Diamond!—Fat George!—the Gentleman!
There could be no question as to the identity of these kites. They were the Gap Gang, and in desperate plight. Their lugger was gone, and their leader dead. At sixes and sevens among themselves, they had quarrelled with the only man who might somehow have saved them. Behind them lay the gallows; before them the sea—and nothing to cross it in but the lugger's long-boat, and that water-logged.
Their condition was desperate; but what about his own?
He could not round the Head. They stood between him and his goal. Could he go back along the bay? He glanced back at the line of headlands, shimmering in the sun. The tide in places already lapped the foot of the cliff. And even as he pondered, a chill something startled his feet. He looked down. It was the water, stealing in upon him, quiet as a cat. He could not stay where he was. To do so was to drown.
There was but one thing for it—to climb.
He glanced up. Things were not so hopeless as he had feared. The mists were drifting seaward. He could see the dark crest of grass rimming the cliff-edge above him.
Thank heaven!—this was no longer the blank and aweful wall, hundreds of feet high and sheer as a curtain, which he had found above him last night. The cliff must have fallen away towards the point. That dark crest of grass, shivering in the wind, was not so far away; and the cliff itself was by no means sheer.
The tide was already lapping the point. The smugglers had drifted away before it. He could hear their voices on the other side. Now was his chance.