r and clawing
upward hand and foot to escape being caught. Billy was now left alone.
He could not even see Hall, much less be further advised by him, and so
tensely did Saxon watch, that the pain in her finger-tips, crushed
to the rock by which she held, warned her to relax. Billy waited his
chance, twice made tentative preparations to leap and sank back, then
leaped across and down to the momentarily exposed foothold, doubled the
corner, and as he clawed up to join Hall was washed to the waist but not
torn away.

Saxon did not breathe easily till they rejoined her at the fire. One
glance at Billy told her that he was exceedingly disgusted with himself.

"You'll do, for a beginner," Hall cried, slapping him jovially on the
bare shoulder. "That climb is a stunt of mine. Many's the brave lad
that's started with me and broken down before we were half way out. I've
had a dozen balk at that big jump. Only the athletes make it."

"I ain't ashamed of admittin' I was scairt," Billy growled. "You're a
regular goat, an' you sure got my goat half a dozen times. But I'm mad
now. It's mostly trainin', an' I'm goin' to camp right here an' train
till I can challenge you to a race out an' around an' back to the
beach."

"Done," said Hall, putting out his hand in ratification. "And some
time, when we get together in San Francisco, I'll lead you up against
Bierce--the one this cove is named after. His favorite stunt, when
he isn't collecting rattlesnakes, is to wait for a forty-mile-an-hour
breeze, and then get up and walk on the parapet of a skyscraper--on the
lee side, mind you, so that if he blows off there's nothing to fetch him
up but the street. He sprang that on me once."

"Did you do it!" Billy asked eagerly.

"I wouldn't have if I hadn't been on. I'd been practicing it secretly
for a week. And I got twenty dollars out of him on the bet."

The tide was now low enough for mussel gathering and Saxon accompanied
the men out the north wall. Hall had several sacks to fill. A rig was
coming for him in the afternoon, he explained, to cart the mussels back
to Carmel. When the sacks were full they ventured further among the
rock crevices and were rewarded with three abalones, among the shells
of which Saxon found one coveted blister-pearl. Hall initiated them into
the mysteries of pounding and preparing the abalone meat for cooking.

By this time it seemed to Saxon that they had known him a long time. It
reminded her of the old t