here, but awful lower down.
Did you hear the stones go with a rush?"

"Yes, yes; but Vince, old chap, tell me how I am to help you."

"I can't: I don't know. I think I can climb out, only I hardly like to
stir for fear of a slip. Here goes, though. I can't stay like this."

Mike stood gazing down at the bushes, trembling with anxiety as he heard
a rustling and scraping sound beneath, which made him long to speak and
ask questions about how his companion got on, but he feared to do so
lest he should take his attention from the work he had on hand. Then
came the rattle of a falling stone going slowly down, as if there were a
good, steady slope; and the boy listened for its plunge into water far
beneath, but the falling of the stone ceased to be heard, while the
rustling and scraping sound made by the climber increased. Then all at
once the bushes began to move and a hand appeared at the far end.

"Take care! pray take care!" cried Mike. "Don't--pray don't slip back!"

"Oh, it's all right now," said Vince, to the watcher's great relief.
"It's all of a slope here, as if it had once been a place where water
ran down. Wait a moment till I get out my knife."

There was a pause, during which Mike climbed round to the end where
Vince was trying to get out; and he was there by the time his companion
began hacking at the brambles with his big knife, first his arm
appearing and soon after his head, as he chopped away, getting himself
free, and seizing the hand extended to him from where Mike knelt and
reached down.

"Hah!" cried Vince, as he climbed on to one of the rugged blocks, "that
wasn't nice. It slopes down from here, so that where I fell through I
must have dropped a dozen feet; but I came down standing, and then fell
this way on my hands and stopped myself from sliding, when a lot of
stones that had been waiting for a touch went down."

"But are you hurt?" cried Mike anxiously.

"Not much: bit bruised, I suppose. But I say, isn't it rum? There must
have been water running to make a place like that. It must have come
all along the bottom, where we've been creeping, and run down here,
eating its way, like your father and mine were talking about one
evening."

"I'd forgotten," said Mike. "But if it ran down there, where did it go
to?"

"Down to the sea, of course, and--I say, Mike, don't you see?" cried
Vince excitedly.

"See? See what?" said the lad, staring.

"What I said."

"How could any one