“I daresay I look as bad,” Leslie muttered, as, taking the rough fisherman’s advice, he bent down and crept under the shelter of the ancient parapet, a dwarf breast-work, with traces of the old crude bastions just visible, and here, to some extent, he was screened from the violence of the wind, and signed to Van Heldre to join him.
Leslie placed his hands to his mouth, and shouted through them.
“Hadn’t you better come here, sir?”
For the position seemed terribly insecure. They were on the summit of the rocky headland, with the sides going on three sides sheer down to the shore, on two of which sides the sea kept hurling huge waves of water, which seemed to make the rock quiver to its foundations. One side of the platform was protected by the old breast-work; on the opposite the stones had crumbled away or fallen, and here there was a swift slope of about thirty feet to the cliff edge.
It was at the top of this slope that Van Heldre stood gazing out to sea.
Leslie, as he watched him, felt a curious premonition of danger, and gathered himself together involuntarily, ready for a spring.
The danger he anticipated was not long in making its demand upon him, for all at once there was a tremendous gust, as if an atmospheric wave had risen up to spring at the man standing on high as if daring the fury of the tempest; and in spite of Van Heldre’s sturdy frame he completely lost his balance. He staggered for a moment, and, but for his presence of mind in throwing himself down, he would have been swept headlong down the swift slope to destruction.
As it was he managed to cling to the rocks, as the wind swept furiously over, and chocked his downward progress for the moment. This would have been of little avail, for, buffeted by the wind, he was gliding slowly down, and but for Leslie’s quickly rendered aid, it would only have been a matter of moments before he had been hurled down upon the rocks below.
Even as he staggered, Leslie mastered the peculiar feeling of inertia which attacked him, and, creeping rapidly over the intervening space, made a dash at the fluttering overcoat, caught it, twisted it rapidly, and held on.
Then for a space neither moved, for it was as if the storm was raging with redoubled fury at the chance of its victim being snatched away.