“Don’t you be in such a hurry,” said Vince. “You won’t catch me sitting here again. I’ll let you down if you like, but once is quite enough for me. I want to have a good look, though, so as to tell you all about it before I do come, for, on second thoughts, I shan’t lower you down here—it’s too horrid. I say: wherever I can see there are thousands of birds, but there are not many places where they can sit. I can see one raven, too—there are two of them sailing about just under me, with their backs shining in the sun. Oh, Mike: look at the cormorants! I never knew there were so many about the island. Big gulls, and puffins, and terns, and—I say, what a cloud of pigeons flying right out from under me: Why, there must be a cavern going right in. Hold tight! I want to lean out more to try and see.”
“No!” shrieked out Mike. “Don’t—don’t! It’s a hundred times worse kneeling here and seeing you than doing it oneself.”
“But I only want to see if there is a cave.”
“If the pigeons keep flying out there must be.”
“Well, there they go, and here are some more coming, and they’ve flown right in somewhere, so I suppose there is. Want to hear any more about the place?”
“No, no. Come up now.”
“All right, old chap; then I will, after one more look round and down below. The water is wild, though, and the rocks are grand; but old Joe is as right as can be: it’s a terrible place, and unless any one likes to hang at the end of a three-hundred-feet rope he cannot get to the bottom here nor anywhere else along this cliff. It’s just three parts of a round, and goes in all of a hollow below, where I am. There—that’s all; and now I’m coming up.”
“Hah!” ejaculated Mike, in a tone full of thankfulness; and as Vince shuffled himself a little way—not much, for there was not room—the rope tightened about his chest, giving him so strong a support that he leaned back, pressed his hands down on either side of him to steady himself, and drew up one leg till he could plant his heel on the stone where he had been seated. A steady draw up of the other leg, and it was beside its fellow; then, getting well hold of the nearest projections on either side, he shouted up to his companion to haul hard—shouted, though in the immensity of the place his words, like those which had preceded them, sounded weak and more like whispers.
“Right!” said Mike; and then he uttered a wild cry, for as Vince thrust with feet and hands together, straightening himself out, the rope tightened at the same moment, and then the lad hung motionless against the slope.
The rain and frost had been hard at work upon the edge of that precipice, as its sharply gnawed-off edge showed and the huge stone which the venturous lad had stridden was only waiting for the sharp thrust which it had received, for with a dull crack it was separated from the side, with an enormous mass beneath it, and went rushing down, leaving a jagged curve, as if the piece had been bitten out, just below the lad’s feet.