“Safe? Why, of course, unless you can pull the rock down on top of you. Come along.”
“I will do it! I will do it!” muttered Max through his set teeth, as he drew back, ghastly pale, and with a wild look in his eyes. Then, turning, and lowering his legs over the edge, he clung spasmodically to a projection which offered its help.
“That’s the way. I’ve got you. Let go.”
For a few moments Max dared not let go. He felt that if he did he should fall headlong seventy or eighty feet into the rock-strewn sea; but, as he hesitated, Kenneth gave him a jerk, his hold gave way, and the next moment, in an agony of horror, he fell full twenty inches—on his feet, and found himself upon the broad shelf, with the crag projecting above his head and the glittering sea below.
“You’ll come down here like a grasshopper next time,” cried Kenneth. “Now then, after me. There’s nothing to mind so long as you don’t slip. I’ll show you.”
He began to descend from shelf to shelf, where the rock had been blasted away so as to form a flight of the roughest of rough steps of monstrous size, while, trembling in every limb, Max followed.
“My grandfather had this done so that he could reach the cavern. Before that it was all like a wall here, and nobody could get up and down. Why, you can climb as well as I can, only you pretend that you can’t.”
Max said nothing, but kept on cautiously descending till he stood upon a broad patch of barnacle-crusted rock, beside what looked like a great rough Gothic archway, forming the entrance to a cave whose floor was the sea, but alongside which there was a rugged continuation of the great stone upon which the lads stood.
“There, isn’t this something like a bath?” cried Kenneth. “It’s splendid, only you can’t bathe when there’s any sea.”
“Why?” asked Max, so as to gain time.