When they had painfully reached the base of the Gateway Rock, it was plain that Ronald was calling them and that he was not hurt. The roar of the breakers against the cliffs was so loud that they could not hear a word he said, but his gestures showed that he had got himself into a trap and saw no way to get out.
LESLEY COULD PLAINLY SEE HIS SMALL FIGURE IN THE GATEWAY
“I can help him down if I can only get up there,” cried Lesley, starting to climb the slippery cliff, but Stumpy held her back. “No,” he shouted, “one enough; I get him down.”
“But how can you, Stumpy,” Lesley faltered, “with your wooden leg?”
“Got wooden leg, yes,” answered Stumpy, cheerfully, “but got two arms all right. No be sailor for nothing. You wait; you see!”—and waving his hand to Ronnie he started off for the storehouse.
Lesley waited on the black rocks in an agony of fear expecting every moment that Ronald would slip down from his perch, and while she watched his small figure and turned with almost every breath to see if Stumpy hove in sight, she kept saying to herself, “No, I didn’t watch him; I didn’t. I forgot all about him. Mother will never call me her faithful little girl again!”
There was, in fact, no danger for Ronald if he kept quiet and did not try to climb down the steep cliff alone, but the anxious sister did not realize this, and it seemed to her that hours had passed when she spied Stumpy limping down among the rocks with a large bundle under his arm.
“All right, Ronnie!” he shouted, as he drew near, “I come pretty soon, now.” And he unrolled a coil of rope before Lesley’s astonished eyes and took from within it his Indian bow and a bundle of arrows.
He held up the bow and the rope to the boy, who could see, though he could not hear, and who waved his hands and clapped them to show that he understood. Not so did Lesley, however, who looked on with a white face as if she thought that Stumpy intended to tie Ronald up with the rope and then shoot him with the arrows.