“Saw one stealing hither—an’ follow’d. A man wi’ a limp foot—went over the side like a cat.”
I must have appeared to doubt this good fortune, for he added—
“‘Be a truth speakin’ man i’ the main, Jack—’lay over ’pon my belly, and spied a ledge—fifty feet down or less—’reckon there be a way thence to the foot. Dear, now! what a rampin’, tearin’ sweat is this?”
For, fast as I could tug, I was hauling up the rope. Near sixty feet came up before I reach’d the end—a thick twisted knot. I rove a long noose; pull’d it over my head and shoulders, and made Billy understand he was to lower me.
“Sit i’ the noose, lad, an’ hold round the knot. For sign to hoist again, tug the rope hard. I can hold.”
He paid it out carefully while I stepp’d to the edge. With the noose about my loins I thrust myself gently over, and in a trice hung swaying.
On three sides the sky compass’d me—wild and red, save where to eastward the dawn was paling: on the fourth the dark rocky face seem’d gliding upward as Billy lower’d. Far below I heard the wash of the sea, and could just spy the white spume of it glimmering. It stole some of the heart out of me, and I took my eyes off it.
Some feet below the top, the cliff fetch’d a slant inward, so that I dangled a full three feet out from the face. As a boy I had adventured something of this sort on the north sides of Gable and the Pillar, and once (after a nest of eaglets) on the Mickledore cliffs: but then ’twas daylight. Now, tho’ I saw the ledge under me, about a third of the way down, it look’d, in the darkness, to be so extremely narrow, that ’tis probable I should have call’d out to Billy to draw me up but for the certainty that he would never hear: so instead I held very tight and wish’d it over.
Down I sway’d (Billy letting out the rope very steady), and at last swung myself inward to the ledge, gain’d a footing, and took a glance round before slipping off the rope.
I stood on a shelf of sandy rock that wound round the cliff some way to my left, and then, as I thought, broke sharply away. ’Twas mainly about a yard in width, but in places no more than two feet. In the growing light I noted the face of the headland ribb’d with several of these ledges, of varying length, but all hollow’d away underneath (as I suppose by the sea in former ages), so that the cliff’s summit overhung the base by a great way: and peering over I saw the waves creeping right beneath me.