“No more sun here, though,” Bennie said, looking up the 800 foot sharp slope of pumice above them, that ended at the 1,200 foot absolutely precipitous and terrifying leap of Llao Rock. “We’re under the shadow of that old rock.”
“Well, we’ll just have to hop round and keep as warm as we can, till the old lake quiets down and we can row home.”
“She don’t show any signs of quieting down,” said Bennie. “Hear the old wind. ’Sides, it’ll take a long while for those waves to quit. And I don’t want to go out on that water again! Gee, I couldn’t row a hundred feet.”
“We could if we had to,” said Spider, bravely. “Anyhow, probably your uncle will send the launch out after us.”
“They don’t know where we are, and we can’t make a fire to signal.”
“They’ll have field-glasses,” Spider suggested. “We can wave our handkerchiefs.”
“’Sides,” Bennie went on, “maybe the launch is out, too, and it’ll be dark before they can get here, and maybe they won’t come across in this sea. I’ll be frozen stiff by that time. I move we climb up to the rim road and walk home. It’s only eight miles from Llao Rock to camp, according to the map.”
“Climb up!” exclaimed Spider, looking aloft at the terrific precipice. “This has gone to your head, Bennie.”
“You poor fish, we wouldn’t climb the rock itself,” Bennie answered. “Don’t you remember, Uncle Billy said somebody worked up to the base, and then along on top of the pumice slope to the rim? If somebody else did it, we can do it. If we see the launch coming after we get up a ways we can come down. Anyhow, it’s better’n freezing to death here. It’ll keep us warm.”
“Looks to me like an awful job,” Spider objected.