"Here are your weapons, now, but how are they to be sent up to you? And what assurance have we that you will keep your word?"
"I have a plan to propose," said Dick. "Let that lady bring them up to me, and she may carry the bag down to you in exchange. Then, when you find that it is all right, all go away and leave me to come down when I please."
That, however, was not his scheme.
"What is the sense of that?" demanded the Red Rover. "I will bring them up myself."
"And perhaps shoot me the moment you come where you can get a bead on me. I will not trust you that far, Captain Joaquin, for I do not believe you mean to allow me to get away from here if you can help it."
"But you have my word that you shall be allowed to go away alive—that is, that your life will be spared."
"And he will keep his word, sir," spoke up the woman.
"You have nothing but his promise, the same as I," said Dick. "He must meet my terms, or I will carry out the threat I have made. It can only cost my life, anyhow and—"
A noise just behind him caught Dick's ear at that instant, and he turned his head to see what it was, when a man threw himself upon him and bore him to the ground. Dick, already kneeling, was taken at a disadvantage, and he was shoved headlong over the ledge.
Even as he felt himself going, the thought came to him to protect his head with the bag of money, and so he did, holding it tight to his head and drawing himself into as much of a ball as possible, for there was not the least use in his trying to save himself the fall down the rugged side of the cliff. And so he fell, over and over, landing at the feet of Captain Joaquin.