"Come up!" said Mr. Wriford. "Come up!"
"I've to rest a moment, boy," Mr. Puddlebox answered him.
He held that hand while he stood resting. He closed his fingers upon it when presently he spoke again. Now the sea had deepened all about, deep to his knees where he stood. As if the slipway before the cave while it stood dry had somehow abated its volume, it seemed to rise visibly and swiftly now that this last barrier was submerged. All about the walls of the inlet deeply and darkly it swelled, licking the walls and running up them in little wavelets, as beasts of prey, massed in a cage, massing and leaping against the bars.
"There's no great room for me beside you, boy," Mr. Puddlebox said and pressed the fingers that he held.
"Come up," said Mr. Wriford. "Quickly—quickly!"
Mr. Puddlebox looked at the narrow ledge and turned his head this way and that and looked again upon the sea.
III
Now, while he looked and while still he waited, the sea's appearance changed. A wind drove in from seaward and whipped its placid surface. Black it had been, save where the high moon silvered it; grey as it flickered and as it swelled about the cliff it seemed to go. It had welled and swelled; now, from either side the pulpit rock that guarded their inlet, it drove in in steeply heaving mass that flung within the cave and all along the cliff and that the cave and cliff flung back. It were as if one with a whip packed this full cage fuller yet, and as though those caged within it leapt here and there and snapped the air with flashing teeth.
"Now I'll try for it, boy," said Mr. Puddlebox. "These stones are shaking under me."
Mr. Wriford withdrew his hand and with his hands painfully raised himself a little to one side. The action removed his back from the crevice up the cliff face in which it had rested. A growth of hardy scrub clung here, and Mr. Puddlebox thrust forward his hand and pulled on it.