He took the end and pulled it over, and made a loop, leaving just enough free line for the purpose; and slipping it over one shoulder and across his breast diagonally, he stood ready.
Meanwhile jerk after jerk was given to the rope, each signal which reached Joe’s hands making him thrill with eagerness.
“There, he must be ready now,” growled Hardock.
“Ready? Yes,” cried the boy, impatiently. “Then you are going to walk away with the rope?”
“Ay, that’s it; draw steadily as I go right along the Hog’s Back. All right. Look out,” he shouted as the word “Haul!” reached their ears. “There, you stand fast, my lad, ready to help him when he comes up to the edge. Now then—off!”
Hardock, who stood with his back now to the cliff edge, started off at a slow steady walk inland, and Joe dropped upon his breast and craned his neck over the edge of the precipice to watch the block below which hid his comrade from his sight.
But not for many moments now. All at once Gwyn’s head appeared, then his chest, and his arms were busy as he seemed to be helping himself over the rock; and the next minute, as Hardock steadily walked away, the boy was hanging clear of the rock face, swinging to and fro and slowly turning round, suggesting that the layers of the rope were beginning to untwist.
To use a familiar expression, Joe’s heart felt as if it were in his mouth, and he trembled with apprehension, dreading lest the rope should come untwisted or the hemp give way, the result of either of these accidents being that Gwyn must fall headlong on to the sea-washed rocks below. Consequently, Joe’s eyes were constantly turning from the ascending figure to the rough pad over which the rope glided, and back again, while his heart kept on beating with a slow, heavy throb which was almost suffocating.
The distance to ascend was very short under the circumstances, but to both boys, as they found when they afterwards compared notes, it seemed to be interminable, and it is doubtful which of the two suffered the more—Joe, as he gazed down with strained eyes and his vacant hands longing to seize the rope, or Gwyn, as he hung with elbows squared, fists clenched on the knot of the rope to ensure its remaining fast, and his head thrown back and face gazing up at his comrade when he slowly turned breast inward, at the sky when he turned back to the rocky wall.
So short a distance for Hardock to continue—his tramp less than two hundred feet—and yet it seemed so great, for every nerve was on the strain, and no one spoke a word.