But the sailors were activity itself, and they slashed and trampled down and hauled and lowered till the whole party found themselves upon a broad stony shelf at the very edge of a sharply-cut rift, whose sides showed that it must have been split from the opposite side by some convulsion of Nature, so exactly was the shape repeated.
At the bottom of this crack—for it could be called little else—the water of the stream rushed foaming along some thirty feet beneath, the whole place looking black and forbidding enough to make any one hesitate before attempting to cross, though the distance to the other ledge was not above five feet, a trifling jump under ordinary circumstances. But here, with the deep black rift and the foaming water beneath, it looked startling to a lad accustomed to a quiet home life. He, however, put a bold face on the matter and stood looking on.
Jack was, however, conscious of the fact that the doctor was watching him in a side-long way, as if expecting to hear him make some objections. As, however, the boy was silent, the doctor spoke.
“Rather an ugly jump, Jack,” he said. “Think you can manage it?”
“Oh, I think so. I shall try.”
“Try? It must not be a try. It has to be done.”
“Yes, I can do it,” said the lad confidently.
“Oh yes, you can do that, Mr Jack,” said Ned in a whisper, as the doctor turned off to speak to Lenny; “think it’s only a ditch a foot deep.”
The boy could not think that with the water roaring beneath him far below, and he could not help glancing back up the steep slope they had descended. This looked so forbidding and meant so much toilsome work, that he felt as if he would rather do the leap, though all the same there was the climb on the other side. Still there was an attraction there in the shape of the strange birds, which he was as eager to secure as the doctor.
“Who’ll go first?” said the doctor. “Here, I will.”