With four men holding on to the rope the Third Officer slipped into the bowline. The rope ran slowly through the well-oiled block, and Alwyn vanished from sight.
It was an eerie sensation dangling at the end of a rope over a cliff more than two hundred feet high. The darkness destroyed the idea of distance, but the descent was none the less hazardous on that account. Although every care had been taken in the surreptitious making of the rope, and every precaution taken to test it, there might be a weak spot that had escaped detection.
Almost from the first of the descent the rope began to turn until he was spinning giddily; then, as the length of rope increased, a swaying motion was additionally imparted, until several times Alwyn bumped heavily against the face of the cliff. He was thus able to check the rotary motion at the expense of sundry and various bruises.
"By Jove," he soliloquized, in the midst of this human punch-ball performance, "it'll be rough on Young Bill if we ever have to lower her down. It would scare her stiff right away."
The actual descent took four minutes. To Burgoyne it seemed much longer, and it was with considerable relief that he felt his feet touch the soft sand, and was able to extricate his cramped and bruised frame from the embraces of the bowline.
There was no need to shout to the others to "'vast paying out!" The release of the tension on the rope told them that the descent was accomplished. Then, like a phantom, the bowline vanished as the helpers hauled the rope to the top of the cliff. Within five minutes Jasper Minalto joined Burgoyne on the beach. Since there was the possibility of the rope's shortening with the release of his weight, and contracting by the heavy dew, he took the precaution of bending in a length of light line and weighting it with a lump of coral.
Burgoyne was not likely to fail through lack of precaution or by neglecting to take proper steps to facilitate his return.
The cave exceeded the Third Officer's expectations. It was for the most part dry, the floor being above high-water mark, and the undisturbed sand at its mouth pointed to the fact that a long time had elapsed since human feet had trodden it. Darkness prevented a minute examination, and it was only by a sense of touch that the two men were able to make their investigations.
About eighty feet in length, and with a gradually shelving floor, the cave was less than five feet in height at its entrance, but soon increased until Minalto was unable to touch the roof even with his enormous reach. In width it averaged about twelve feet when half a dozen paces inside its mouth.
There was water, too. Eagerly Burgoyne groped for and found the steady trickle. Holding his hands cup-fashion he filled his palms with water and held the liquid to his lips.