top at nothing. And was not Jim, his dearest and most admired
friend, in danger? It was an agonizing thought that gripped his mind.

He sprang forward with a spasmodic intake of the breath, and sped like a
wild faun along the rugged hillside. He did not know that his face and
head were caked with clotted blood. He even forgot the throbbing pain.
He would climb down the cliffs by the difficult and undetermined route
he had traversed the day before.

Bursting through thickets and stumbling across darkening ravines he
reached the point from which the perilous descent of the cliff side
could be undertaken. Gloomy crags towered above him, and below, the
almost unknown forbidding way, crowded with tragic uncertainties.

But not a moment could be spared. Without hesitation he plunged
recklessly into the abyss and in a moment was hugging the cold rocks,
clutching at supporting twigs and undergrowths, sliding, slipping,
almost falling down a frightful precipice.

Once he lost his hold entirely and felt himself whirling through the
darkness, but he writhed himself upright in his fall and brought up with
a smash and a crash in the dense foliage of a quertel nut tree. He did
not feel the torn skin on face and hands, nor know that a fresh torrent
of blood burst from the abrasure on his head. He groped blindly for the
splintered rocks at the trees' base, felt their resisting force and
lunged forward once more.

Soon he found himself on a sloping bench or shelf whose surface was on a
level with the tops of some trees below, and he remembered the spot.
Here Jo and he had enjoyed a grand view of the ocean, enveloped in
mystery and obscurity. Owing to the absence of shrubbery it was lighter
here, and out of pure necessity he was compelled to halt for breath. He
leaned against the wall of rock for a moment before commencing the next
stage of the journey.

He remembered that his former passage had led him for a hundred feet or
more before bringing him to another drop. Straining his eyes along the
stretch of shelf he suddenly beheld an object emerge from the darkness
and grow larger as it approached. Then appeared another and another till
he had counted six, all in regular Indian file and moving in absolute
silence.

There was a moment of dreadful uncertainty. Clearly these were the
natives of this or some nearby island, and the first that he or any of
his party had seen. The only weapon that Juarez possessed was a hunting
knife. He