Hence the successful landing of many a boat-load, which had been scattered the country through.
For there, at the foot of the cliff, lay a natural platform or pier, almost as level as if it had been formed for a landing stage. The deep water came right up to its edge, and here, at a chosen time of tide, a lugger could lie close in, and her busy crew and their helpmates land keg and bale upon the huge ledge,—a floor of intensely hard stone, full of great ammonites, many a couple of feet across, monsters of shell-fish, which had gradually settled down and died, when the stone in which they lay had been soft mud.
Revenue boats had of course, from time to time, as they explored the coast, noted this natural landing-place, but as there was only a broad step twenty feet above this to form another platform, and then the cliffs ran straight up two hundred feet slightly inclined over toward the sea, and the existence of even a moderate surf would have meant wreck, it was never even deemed likely that there was danger here, and consequently it was left unwatched.
The smugglers had a different opinion of the place, and on Ram reaching the spot he was in nowise surprised to find a group of about thirty men on the cliff, clustered about the end of a spar, whose butt was run down into a hole in the rock, which lay a foot beneath the turf, and at whose end, as it rose at an angle, was a pulley block and rope run through ready for use should the lugger come.
“Where’s father?” whispered Ram to one of the men, who looked curiously indistinct amid the fog.
“Here, boy,” was whispered close to his ear. “Going down to help?”
“May I, father?”
Shackle grunted; and, after speaking to one of the men, Ram took hold of the loop at the end of the rope, thrust a leg through, held on tightly, and, after the word was given, swung himself off into the fog.
The well-oiled wheel ran fast, and it was a strange experience that of gliding rapidly down and steadily turning round and round with the thick darkness all around, and nothing to show that he who descended was not stationary. The peril of such a run down would have appeared the greater, could he who descended have seen how the rope was allowed to run. For no careful hands held it to allow it to glide through fingers, which could at any moment clutch the line tightly and act as a check. The rope lay simply on the turf, and the man who watched over the descent, merely placed his boot over it, the hollow between sole and heel affording room for the rope to run, and a little extra pressure stopping its way.
Thus it was that Ram was allowed to glide rapidly down, till by experience the man knew that he was nearly at the bottom when the rope began to run more slowly, and then was checked exactly as the boy’s feet touched the stone shelf, and he stepped from the loop on to the ammonite-studded rock.