Part 41 (1/2)

As he stood facing the rock he found directly that he could not get any farther to his right, and a little search proved that froher, not even had he been provided with a ladder Even if a rope had been lowered down to him from the top of the cliff, it would have been of no avail, for he realised now that which he could not see from the hole by which he had escaped, to wit, that the cliff projected above the opening, and a lowered down rope would have hung several feet right away clear

”Get farther along,” he said coolly; and he edged hi hold of every pro cautiously along the rough ledge over the hole, and then onward for forty or fifty feet, where a rift ran upward, and, by cautious clie, a few feet above which was another rift, and he cliain, to come to a depression or niche, where he stopped to rest

”No occasion to hurry,” he said to hiazed out to sea, noting a sail far away to the right, but the vessel was a schooner--it was not that which he sought

He was apparently cool enough, but his pulses beat h which he had gone, and being after a few et his task at an end, he tried to the left, to find no way up there, to the right, but everywhere the rock was perpendicular, and offered no foothold; or else sloped outward, and concealed as above

He tried again and again, hoping against hope, but without result

”Must be a way up,” he said, evidently considering that there htly hold of a rough corner and leaned out a little to gaze upward, to find, in whichever direction he looked, right or left, there was nothing but rugged limestone, which had been splintered and moulded by time till there was not a spot where the most venturesome climber could obtain foothold; in fact, above him he could not see a spot where even the sea-birds had been in the habit of finding a resting-place

It was for liberty, and naturally enough the midshi+pman made no superficial search His next plan was to lie flat down in the niche he had -place, lean over, and try and map out a course by which he could descend a little way and then pass along for a distance, and resume his climb upith better chances of success

But no; he could see no sign to help him, and, as a keen sense of disappointot so near liberty and have to give up, he decided that the way to freedoe of the shelf on which he lay, it struck him for the first ti his eyes away, he looked up again for a way there

All in vain He was fully a hundred and twenty feet froe cliff, and, half afraid now that he should be quite afraid, he deter to the spot where he had crept on to the niche floor, he began to lower hi,” he said to himself, as he searched with his feet and hts behind at a tih to think where to put one's feet”

”Glad I haven't got on my uniform,” he said a few h rock

Soon after,--

”Oh, how sore my hands are! That's better”

He was back in safety on the ledge over the hole, and, passing along, he had soon descended to the one beneath the exit

”Now then,” he said, as he paused for a fewhis descent; ”this will be easier”

Soin, and he sat doith his legs hanging over the ledge, to give his nerves ti tendency to throb about his pulses, and he was not sufficiently conversant with the house he lived in, to know that confine the past few days had not given him what the doctors call ”tone”

So he sat there with his back to the rock, gazing out to sea again, and then watching the graceful curves her, and came nearer and nearer, till it was on a level with hi hi to fall and let you have a pick atto tuh, he shuddered, and he had to exercise a little force to make his new start doard

”Best way after all,” he said, as he began to descend ”If you go up, it gets erous every o down, it gets safer, because you have less”

He found the way now comparatively easy, for the rock sloped a little out, and he had even got down soh,” he said, as he put a bleeding knuckle to his lips ”Don't make much difference, I should think, whether you fall one hundred feet or five Bother! I wish I did not keep on thinking about tu”

He forced himself to study the next part of his descent, which was nearly perpendicular, but well broken up with ledges and cracks which offered good holding, and terminated a hundred feet below, upon a shelf, which naturally offered itself as his next resting-place, but beyond which it was impossible to see