“Nearly went down,” he muttered. “That’s not the way to help anyone who has just fallen.”
He paused for a few moments to think about getting help from Eilygugg.
“There are no smugglers at home now,” he said to himself, and his thoughts turned homeward.
“Uncle couldn’t climb up here and handle ropes,” he muttered; “and as for Ness—bah! he’s a stupid muddling old woman.
“I must get right round somehow and see where the opening is,” said the lad, at last. “But when I have found it, what then? I must get back here again; and then? Yes, I must have help and a rope. Oh, what a lonely old place this is when you want anything done! Bah! What a grumbler you are,” he cried, the next moment. “You forgot all about Tom. He’s sure to be over to-day, and I’ll bring him with a rope.”
This thought heartened the lad up, and he set off cautiously and quickly to get round by the head of the great rocky gash to the other side.
The journey was very dangerous and bad, but he was a good climber, and at the end of a dozen yards he was stopped by a great block which lay across his path with the portion to his right overhanging the gulf, forcing him to go round by the other end.
This he passed with ease, and he uttered a cry of astonishment the next moment, for he found himself at the narrow head of a transverse gash which stopped further progress in the way he intended, but offered apparently, as it curved round and down, an easy descent to the very part he wished to reach. And so it proved, for proceeding cautiously, he began to descend by a narrow ledge or shelf, with the overhanging wall on his right and a sheer fall of twenty feet on his left.
A few yards further it was forty feet, and again a few yards placed him in a position that cut off all view of the bottom.
“Won’t do to be giddy here,” he said to himself. “Who’d have thought of finding such a place?”