get right round somehow and see where the opening is," said the
lad, at last. "But when I have found it, what then? I must get back
here again; and then? Yes, I must have help and a rope. Oh, what a
lonely old place this is when you want anything done! Bah! What a
grumbler you are," he cried, the next moment. "You forgot all about
Tom. He's sure to be over to-day, and I'll bring him with a rope."

This thought heartened the lad up, and he set off cautiously and quickly
to get round by the head of the great rocky gash to the other side.

The journey was very dangerous and bad, but he was a good climber, and
at the end of a dozen yards he was stopped by a great block which lay
across his path with the portion to his right overhanging the gulf,
forcing him to go round by the other end.

This he passed with ease, and he uttered a cry of astonishment the next
moment, for he found himself at the narrow head of a transverse gash
which stopped further progress in the way he intended, but offered
apparently, as it curved round and down, an easy descent to the very
part he wished to reach. And so it proved, for proceeding cautiously,
he began to descend by a narrow ledge or shelf, with the overhanging
wall on his right and a sheer fall of twenty feet on his left.

A few yards further it was forty feet, and again a few yards placed him
in a position that cut off all view of the bottom.

"Won't do to be giddy here," he said to himself. "Who'd have thought of
finding such a place?"

He moved along cautiously, holding on by the rock on his right, and
found that it was singularly cracked and riven, but it afforded good
hold. Directly after a short pause and peer forward and downward to try
if he could see any signs of the poor fellow who had called for help, he
stepped on again slowly and cautiously, anchoring himself, as it were,
by thrusting his arm to the elbow in a perpendicular crack, so that he
could hang outward and get a better view down.

"Hullo!" he ejaculated, in wonder. "How strange!" and he began to
sniff, as a cool dank puff of air saluted his nostrils and he recognised
the peculiar odour of decaying seaweed.

"This narrow crack must go right down to the sea somewhere," he said to
himself. "Well, why not? Rocks do split all sorts of ways. There, I'm
right," he added, for there was another moist puff of cool air, and in
company with it a peculiar far-off whispering sound, one which he well
knew, fo