“Anything is better than standing here.  I don’t think the cliff goes quite sheer down everywhere.  Let us try, Dick; it would be a relief to be doing something.”

“All right, Jack.  Let you and I stick together.  Do you lads,” he said, turning to three or four sailors who were standing by, “keep close to us, and lend a hand.”  At the point where they were standing, it was clearly impossible to get down, for the rock sloped straight from, their feet.  Farther to the left, however, it went down more gradually, and here the boys began to try to descend.

“There is a sort of hollow here,” Jack shouted, “a sort of ravine.  This is our best place.”

Cautiously, step by step, holding on to such bushes as grew among the rocks pausing sometimes flattened against the rocks by the force of the gust, and drenched every moment by the sheets of spray, the boys made their way down, till they paused at a spot where the rock fell away sheer under their feet.  They could go no farther.  At the moment they heard a wild scream.  A vessel appeared through the darkness below, and crashed with a tremendous thud against the rocks.  The masts, which were so close that the boys seemed almost able to jump upon them, as they reached nearly to the level on which they were standing, instantly going over the side.  Peering over, they could see the black mass in the midst of the surging white waters at their feet.  The sailors had paused some way up the ascent, appalled by the difficulties which the boys, lighter and more active, had accomplished.

“Go up to the top again,” Hawtry said, climbing back to them.  “Bring down one of those spars we brought down, a block, a long rope, and a short one to serve as a guy.  Get half-a-dozen more hands.  You’d better fix a rope at the top firmly, and use it to steady you as you return.  There’s a ship ashore just underneath us, and I think we can get down.”

In a few minutes the sailors descended again, carrying with them a spar some twenty feet long.  With immense difficulty this was lowered to the spot which the boys had reached.  One of the sailors had brought down a lantern, and by its light a block was lashed to the end, and a long rope roved through it.  Then a shorter rope was fastened to the end as a guy, and the spar lowered out, till it sloped well over the edge.  The lower edge was wedged in between two rocks, and others piled round it.

“Now,” Dick said, “I will go down.”

“You’ll never get down alive, sir,” one of the sailor said.  “The wind will dash you against the cliff.  I’ll try, sir, if you like; I’m heavier.”

“Let me go down with you,” Jack said.  “The two of us are heavier than a man, and we shall have four legs to keep us off the cliff.  Besides, we can help each other down below.”

“All right,” Dick said.  “Fasten us to the rope, Hardy.  Make two loops so that we shall hang face to face, and yet be separate, and give me a short rope of two or three fathoms long, so that we can rope ourselves together, and one hold on in case the other is washed off his feet when we get down.  Look here, Hardy, do you lie down and look over the edge, and when you hear me yell, let them hoist away.  Now for it!”