Crawling cautiously forward to the brink of the ledge, Tom and Jim looked over and involuntarily drew quickly back. Although they had been accustomed to standing on the lofty crosstrees of the Hector and helping the crew on the yards far above the tumbling sea, they had never felt dizzy or ill at ease, yet, as they glanced over the verge of the precipice, their toes and fingers tingled and they had a vivid, agonizing sensation of pitching over the cliff. Upon the masts or yards there was always something tangible to connect them with the ship, but here, on this overhanging ledge, there was nothing but space between them and the heaving green sea that roared and thundered about an isolated, perpendicular mass of rock that jutted from the water for several hundred feet directly beneath the spot where they stood.
“Whew!” exclaimed Tom. “That’s the first time I ever felt nervous.”
“Me, too,” declared Jim. “Gosh! Can you fellows look over there?”
The two islanders laughed. “Us ain’t nervous,” stated Paul. “Reckon we’re used to it. Come on, look at To’gallant Rock an’ you can see the birds a-sittin’.”
Determined not to be outdone by the two others, Tom and Jim again drew themselves to the edge of the cliff, and by the exertion of all their will power, managed to look down at the mass of rock and at the thousands of sea birds which covered it.
“But I don’t see how we’re going to get to them,” said Tom as all drew back from the edge. “We can’t get down there and no boat could land on the rock if we did.”
Paul and his brother gazed at the speaker in amazement.
“Us goes down on the line,” announced Getty at last. “It’s easy.”
This time it was Tom’s turn to be astonished. “You don’t mean to say you boys really go down there on a rope!” he cried.
“Watch us,” replied Paul with a chuckle. Uncoiling the long rope he had brought, he quickly knotted a bowline in one end, and walking a few yards inland, took a turn and a couple of half-hitches around a stout, wooden stake that was firmly wedged among some rocks.