Roy drew a long breath.
'That was a bad bit,' he said. 'As bad as anything I ever struck. Don't mind telling you now, Ken, that I was in a blue funk.'
'You didn't show it,' Ken answered rather breathlessly. 'If you had, I believe I should have crocked.'
'You didn't, anyhow. That's the main thing. And I wouldn't ask a better man to go climbing with. You kept your head, and did what you were told. Well, now I think the worst is over. This looks like a regular fault in the strata, and it ought to take us to the bottom.
Roy's judgment was correct. There were still some nasty places, but nothing like what they had already tackled, and within another quarter of an hour they had reached the bottom of the gorge.
A little stream ran down the centre, finding its way among piled masses of fallen rock. On each side the cliffs towered so high that only a mere slit of sky was visible. It was as wild and gloomy a spot as Ken had ever seen.
'I've seen better walking,' observed Roy, as a flat stone slipped under his foot, and nearly pitched him over into the bed of the brook.
'It's better than that abominable cliff, anyhow,' returned Ken. 'But I'd give something to know where we're going.'
'I can tell you. The sea. If we follow the stream we're bound to reach salt water.'
'But where?' said Ken—'where? I don't know that I've got the points of the compass very clear in my head, and there's no sun visible yet, but if I'm not mistaken, this brook runs east, not west.'