“There is a path, I remember,” said he, “by which in old days the McQuillans came down to the cave. I went up it myself as a boy. See here.”
And he led us a few steps round, as if back towards the cave; where was an iron spike driven into the smooth rock a little above the edge of the water.
He reached forward at this, and swung himself out over the water till his feet rested on a narrow ledge beyond, scarce the width of his boot, at the water’s edge. Above this was a jutting nose of rock by which he raised himself on to the peg itself, and from that, by a long stride, on to a safer ledge above.
“Follow me,” he cried, “and look not back.”
Painfully and clumsily I achieved the perilous stride, and found myself at the entrance of a crack in the rock, into which the waves below dashed and thundered, and then, beaten back, shot up in an angry column high over our heads, descending with a whirl that all but swept us headlong from our perch.
Up this rift I watched Ludar clamber, losing him now and again in the shooting foam, and now and again, as the spray cleared off, seeing him safe, and ever a foot higher than before. How I followed him ’twould be hard to say. Yet the rock seemed riven into cracks which gave us a tolerable foothold, the better as we got higher up; and had it not been for the constant dash of the water, and the darkness, it might have been accounted passable enough. As it was, but for Ludar’s strong arm above me, I should have lost my feet twice, and in my fall, perchance, might have carried away one or more of those who followed.
When we reached the top of the rift, a still worse peril awaited. For now we had to crawl painfully for some distance along a narrow edge on the face of the naked rock, with little hold for our hands, and, since the ledge slanted downward and was wet and slippery with the spray, still less for our feet. Even Ludar, I could see, was at a loss. But to halt now was useless; to turn back impossible. So, gripping as best he might at the rugged rock, he stepped boldly on to the ledge. I could but follow. Yet, at the first step, my feet slid from under me, and but that my hands held firm I should have been headlong. Inch by inch hugging the cliff, with our backs to the sea, we crawled over that treacherous ledge, sometimes slipping to our knees, sometimes hanging sheer by our hands.
Once, in a moment of weakness, I looked back to see how our men were faring. As I did so, a youth, next after me, a tall, brave youth who had been foremost in all the peril, suddenly staggered and slipped. For a moment he hung by hand and knee to the ledge; the next with a loud groan he fell backwards into the darkness. I heard the crash of his body on the rocks below, and, in my horror, my own grip for an instant relaxed, and I felt myself following. But a strong hand caught me and held me up, and Ludar said:
“Humphrey, are you a fool? Lookup, man, or you are lost.”
After that I had eyes for naught but the cliff before me. And although, before that terrible passage was ended, I heard five more groans and as many more crashes on the rocks below, I managed to keep my own footing, till at last, with my head in a whirl, I stood beside Ludar on a broader, straighter ledge, within a dozen feet of the cliff-top.