The discovery brought me to my feet, and set me running towards the end of the shaft of sunlight.  I left the heather, scrambled up some yards of screes, and had a difficult time on some very smooth slabs, where only the friction of tweed and rough rock gave me a hold.  Slowly I worked my way towards the speck of sunlight, till I found a handhold, and swung myself into the crack.  On one side was the main wall of the hill, on the other a tower some ninety feet high, and between them a long crevice varying in width from three to six feet.  Beyond it there showed a small bright patch of sea.

There was more, for at the point where I entered it there was an overhang which made a fine cavern, low at the entrance but a dozen feet high inside, and as dry as tinder.  Here, thought I, is the perfect hiding-place.  Before going farther I resolved to return for food.  It was not very easy descending, and I slipped the last twenty feet, landing on my head in a soft patch of screes.  At the burnside I filled my flask from the whisky bottle, and put half a loaf, a tin of sardines, a tin of tongue, and a packet of chocolate in my waterproof pockets.  Laden as I was, it took me some time to get up again, but I managed it, and stored my belongings in a corner of the cave.  Then I set out to explore the rest of the crack.

It slanted down and then rose again to a small platform.  After that it dropped in easy steps to the moor beyond the tower.  If the Portuguese Jew had come here, that was the way by which he had reached it, for he would not have had the time to make my ascent.  I went very cautiously, for I felt I was on the eve of a big discovery.  The platform was partly hidden from my end by a bend in the crack, and it was more or less screened by an outlying bastion of the tower from the other side.  Its surface was covered with fine powdery dust, as were the steps beyond it.  In some excitement I knelt down and examined it.

Beyond doubt there was spoor here.  I knew the Portuguese Jew’s footmarks by this time, and I made them out clearly, especially in one corner.  But there were other footsteps, quite different.  The one showed the rackets of rough country boots, the others were from un-nailed soles.  Again I longed for Peter to make certain, though I was pretty sure of my conclusions.  The man I had followed had come here, and he had not stayed long.  Someone else had been here, probably later, for the un-nailed shoes overlaid the rackets.  The first man might have left a message for the second.  Perhaps the second was that human presence of which I had been dimly conscious in the night-time.