This was
a task demanding the utmost caution, for a depth of some eighteen inches
of light soil crowned the rock, thickly covered with long rank grass,
which, owing to the lightness of the soil, afforded but a very
precarious and uncertain hold. The soil itself, too, crumbled away
immediately beneath his touch, so that at the very top of the precipice
he was unable to find anything to which he could safely hold. For a
short time it almost seemed as if these apparently trifling obstacles
were about to baffle him altogether, and it was not until he had
actually laid bare the rock immediately in front of him, as far as his
arm could reach, that he accomplished his object, and stood safely on
the top of the cliff.

He now threw himself flat on the ground in the long grass, thus
effectually concealing himself from the view of any chance passer-by,
and crawled to the crest of the hill, where he again peered cautiously
about him. The ground, from the spot whereon he knelt, declined pretty
steeply to the sea, only a quarter of a mile distant; slightly to his
right there lay a valley, with a tiny river flowing through it into the
sea; and on either bank of this stream there stood two or three crazy
wattle-huts, scarcely worthy the name of human habitations, with a net
or two spread behind them on poles in the sun to dry. Three or four
fishing-canoes and a boat--a ship's boat, which looked as though it had
been picked up derelict--were moored in the stream; but human beings,
there were none visible. In line with the river, commencing at a
distance of about two miles from the shore, and extending right out to
the horizon, there lay a group of islets, some forty or more in number;
and far away beyond them, lying like a thin grey cloud of haze on the
water, he could see the Isle of Pines.

"So far, so good," thought George. The spot was evidently a lonely one,
inhabited by a few fishermen only; there was no sign of any watch being
maintained on the chance of the runaways putting in an appearance, so
the chase had doubtless by this time been abandoned as hopeless; there
was a capital boat--which, in his urgent necessity, he felt he need not
scruple to appropriate--lying in the stream below, and everything
promised favourably for a successful escape from the island.

But though the scene below looked so quiet and deserted, and though the
boat lay there so temptingly within sight, Leicester felt that the
evening would be the