Without a word, Watkins dropped down the cabin hatchway.
"Why do you single me out to be left behind?" demanded Betty indignantly.
"Because, Betty, you can't climb that wall—and somebody has got to be ready to start the engine and get us away in a hurry."
"I suppose you're right," she sighed. "Well, don't blame me if anything goes wrong. Of all the hare-brained—"
"Rats!" I scoffed. "If they jump us, and there are too many of them, we'll retreat. But maybe we can clean up this job to-night for good and all. If we can, it's worth trying."
Watkins emerged from the cabin with the tools and the expression of a martyr. Nikka insisted that he was the best climber in the party, and took charge of the rope. Hugh and I carried the crowbars, which we wrapped in sailcloth to prevent their clinking against the stones of the wall. Then we stepped on to the slimy rocks of the jetty, Nikka in the lead.
It was a perilous climb to the shore, and we negotiated it slowly, helping one another and taking every precaution to avoid making any noise. At last we found ourselves in the jumble of bowlders constituting the breakwater at the foot of the sea-wall, which reared its moss-grown battlements high overhead. We turned to the left here, and crawled over and through the rocks on the beach to a point under the overhanging wall of the House of the Married. From the beach it looked unclimbable, but Nikka, after surveying its mounting courses, shattered and riven by centuries of neglect, by earthquakes and the ceaseless battering of the waves, removed his shoes and started the ascent, an end of the grapnel-rope looped around his waist.
We who watched him stood with knocking hearts for what seemed an eternity. Spread-eagled against the wall, he appeared as infinitesimal as a fly in the darkness. At first we could see him when he slipped and caught himself or sprawled or clutched for handholds. But soon he became an indistinct blotch on the masonry, and we held our breath, helpless now to aid him. Our first knowledge that he had succeeded came when he jerked up the grapnel lying on the beach at our feet. He hoisted it slowly, lest it clash against the wall, adjusted its prongs and tossed down the knotted length of rope.
Hugh followed him with ease, bracing his feet against the wall when he was tired. Then I went up. Then my uncle. Watkins came last. We stood, bending low, on the seaward verge of the roof over which Nikka and I had fled the previous night. It was now well towards midnight, and a haze was settling over the city. The Curlew was invisible even to us who knew precisely her location. The large courtyard to our right was a mere blot; the Garden of the Cedars in front of us was marked by the whispering tops of its two trees. The silence was absolute. The water lapped on the beach below. That was all.
Naturally and by right, Hugh took command. It was his expedition.