“Oh, what fools—what idiots!” cried Joe, excitedly; and certain now of where his comrade was, he went quickly down the slope to the cliff edge and looked over down towards where the sea eddied among the fallen rocks three hundred feet below, and shouted,—“Gwyn!—Gwyn!”
His voice seemed lost there; but as he listened there came faintly a reply in the one appealing cry—“help!”
But it was away to his right, where the rocks rose up rugged and broken. Where he stood the grass ran right to the edge, but there the granite looked as if it had been built up with large blocks into a mighty overhanging bastion, which rose up fully fifty feet higher; and it was evident that Gwyn had worked his way somewhere out to the cliff face far below this mass.
“Why there must be an adit,” cried Hardock, in a tone full of wonder. “I never knowed of that.”
(Note; an adit is a horizontal shaft driven in from the cliff.)
“Yes, and he’s safe—he’s safe?” cried Joe; and his manliness all departed in his wild excitement, for he burst into a fit of hysterical sobbing. He mastered his emotion though, directly, and shouted,—
“Hold on! Coming,” in the hope of being heard.
He was heard, for, faintly heard from below to their right, came the former appealing word—
“Help!”
“All right,” he yelled. “Now, Sam, can I get down there?”