"That may be true, but if our safety requires it we may repeat the performance more than once," declared Orissa. "Unfortunately, we have lost our weapons of defense."
"Can't we recover the bars?"
"Not without going down for them. If you think you could lower me over the edge——"
"I just couldn't, Ris. Don't mention it."
"Very well; then we will proceed unarmed. Look, Sybil! Isn't it a glorious prospect?"
"In point of comparison, yes," admitted Sybil, speaking slowly as she gazed around her.
They were standing on a level table-land which lay between the base of the mountain and the sea. The "mountain" was really a great hill of rock, rising only a hundred and fifty feet or so from the table-land. The level space before them was clothed with a queer sort of verdure. It was not grass, but plants with broad and rather crinkly leaves, so tender that wherever the girls stepped the leaves were broken and crushed. Nor was the color an emerald green; it was rather a pale pea-green and the plants grew not in soil but sprang from tiny cracks and fissures in a sort of shale, or crushed slate, which was constantly kept moist by the seepage of the little stream.
The island here made an abrupt curve to the west and a little farther along the girls saw patches of bushes and several small groups of tall, tropical trees, resembling plantains, or palms. There were vines, too, which grew in rank profusion among the rocks and helped relieve the dismal landscape by their greenery. But nowhere appeared any earth, or natural soil; whatever grew, grew among the crushed rock, or shale, which seemed to possess a certain fertility where moisture reached it.
"This part of the island seems by far the best," asserted Sybil. "Let us explore it thoroughly."
They set out to skirt the edge of the bluff and on reaching the first group of trees found they were bananas. Several bunches of plump fruit hung far up among the branches, quite out of reach.