Brownie and Fawn hunted in front. The party followed them up a slanting track, the steepness of which was lessened by its many windings. In the rainy season the gap doubtless served as a shoot for the water from the platform above, which then would form a torrent. But now, at the height of summer, its bed was dry. It was necessary to be careful in walking between these rocks, which might easily have fallen like an avalanche if the least shock had upset their equilibrium.
Quite half an hour was required to reach the top of the cliff.
The first to step out onto the top was the eager Jack.
Before him, towards the west, a vast plain extended as far as eye could see.
Jack stood wonderstricken. He turned about to gaze round. When Mr. Wolston joined him he exclaimed:
"What a country! What a surprise, and what a disappointment!"
The discomfiture was general when M. Zermatt and the others emerged upon the plateau.
Mrs. Wolston and Mme. Zermatt, with Hannah near them, sat down at the foot of a great block of rock. There was not a tree to give the least shelter from a raging sun, no grass on which to lie down. The stony ground, strewn haphazard with great rocks, unadapted to any vegetable growth, was carpeted in places with some of those wild mosses which do not require soil. As M. Zermatt declared, it was a desert of Arabia Petræa adjoining the fertile district of the Promised Land.
It was indeed an amazing contrast to the region lying between Jackal River and False Hope Point, and to the country beyond the defile of Cluse, the Green Valley, and the land abutting on Pearl Bay. And Mme. Zermatt's question may well be echoed, what would have been the plight of the shipwrecked family if the tub boat had deposited them on the eastern coast of the island?
From this cliff as far as Deliverance Bay, which could be discerned five miles away to the west, the eye saw nothing but a desert country, without verdure, without a tree, without a single stream. Upon its surface no four-footed creature could be descried. It seemed to be forsaken even by the birds of land and sea.