“Come,” said the lieutenant, in a cheery tone, “don’t lose thy spirit, boy; thou showedst enough and to spare but an hour since. Thy comrades are gone, ’tis true, and thou art left alone. But, give but thy word to refrain from such company for the future, and I’ll pardon thee, and see thee on thy way, for the sake of the courage thou hast shown, ill as thy cause was.”
Still the lad said nothing in answer. But he looked around him with returning intelligence, not at his captor indeed, but at everything else, and particularly at the cliffs, with their jutting points and scrubby growth of reed and flowering weed.
Tregenna followed the direction of his eyes, but saw nothing in particular to attract his attention. But as he took a step away the lad suddenly sprang up, snatching up the lieutenant’s pistol, which he had deposited on the ground while tending the wounded boy, and made for a point where the cliff was steepest and apparently most inaccessible.
As soon as he reached it he placed his foot on a ledge of the rock, and, seizing a rope which was evidently well-known to him, began to climb up the face of the cliff with astounding agility, considering his recent dazed condition.
Tregenna followed quickly. But the lad, who was by this time a good way up, drew up the end of the rope after him, and fastened it into a knot so that it was far out of his pursuer’s reach. To attempt to climb the cliff without it was impossible and Tregenna could only stand and shake his fist at the lad in impotent rage at the daring with which he had been again outwitted.
But the lad’s impudence and audacity did not stop there. The moment he reached the summit of the cliff, he dislodged a loose mass of earth and sandstone which was lying loose in one of the crevices at the edge, and, with a deft kick, hurled it down upon his generous enemy below.
Tregenna stepped back hastily, receiving thus only some fragments of dust and earth upon his head, instead of the heavy mass which had been intended for him.
And he swore to himself, as he turned away and made for his own boat, that he would never again be so soft-hearted as to spare one of these ruffians, who, even in early youth, were dead to every generous human feeling.