CHAPTER V
_On the Face of the Cliff: Wherein Billy Topsail Gets Lost in a Perilous Place and Sits Down to Recover His Composure_
IN summer, when there chanced to be no fish, or when no bait was tobe had, and the fish were not to be jigged, Billy Topsail had idletime, which he was not slow to improve for his own amusement. Oftenhe wandered on the cliffs and heads near the harbour--not always forgulls' eggs: sometimes for sheer love of the sky and space and sunlitair. Once, being bound for Breakheart Head, to watch the waves beat onthe rocks below, he came across old Arch Butt.
"Wonderful sea outside," said the old fisherman. "Wonderful sea, Billy.'Tis as big a tumble as ever I seed stirred up in a night."
"An' you'll not be takin' the punt t' the grounds?" Billy asked, insurprise.
"I'm not able, lad. 'Tis too much for any paddle-punt. Sure, the sea'sbreakin' right across the tickle. 'Tis so much as a man's life is wortht' try t' run out."
"Isn't you got a salmon net off Shag Rock?"
"I is that," Arch answered; "an' I'm wantin' bad t' get to it. 'Tis setoff the point of Shag Rock, an' I'm thinkin' the sea will wreck it, for'tis a wonderful tumble, indeed. 'Tis like I'll not be able t' get outafore to-morrow mornin', but I'm hopin' I will."
"An' I hopes you may, Skipper Arch," said Billy.
It was a fine wish, born of the fresh breeze and brightness of theday--a word let drop from a heart full of good feeling for all theworld: nothing more. Yet within a few hours Billy Topsail's life hungupon the possibility of its fulfillment.
"Ay," he repeated, "I hopes you may."
Billy Topsail followed the rocky road to the Bath Tub, climbed theLookout, and descended the rough declivity beyond to the edge of thesea, meanwhile lifted to a joyous mood by the sunlight and wind andcloudless sky. Indeed, he was not sorry he had come; the grim cliffsand the jagged masses of rock lying at their feet--the thunder andfroth where sea met rock--the breaking, flashing water to seaward;all this delighted him then, and were not soon forgotten. Best ofall, the third submerged rock off Shag Cliff--the rock they call theTombstone--was breaking; the greater waves there leaped into the airin fountains of froth.
"I 'low I'll get closer t' the Tombstone," thought he.
Thus he was led along the coast to the foot of Shag Cliff. It was ahard climb, in which hands and feet were both concerned. There werechasms to leap, sharp points to round, great rocks to scale, narrowledges to pass over on the toes of his boots; and all the while thebreakers were crashing and foaming below him, and now and againsplashing him with spray.
Had the day been drear, it may be he would not have ventured so far;but the sun was out, the day long, the gulls quietly soaring over thesea, and on he went, giving no thought whatever to his return.
Once under the cliff, he ventured farther. Detached from it, there liesNanny's Rock, which must long ago have fallen from above; the breakerssurrounded but did not sweep it when they rose and broke.
His wish to lie there in the sunshine, with the blue sky above him andthe noise of the water in his ears, led him to dash across the drippingspace between when the wave fell back, even though he must scrambleout of the way of the returning water.
In a few minutes he was deep in an enchanting day-dream, which, to hissubsequent peril, soon changed to sleep.
The tide was rising. A few drops of spray, falling upon his face from agreat breaker, awoke him. On the instant he was wide awake and lookingdesperately about. Then he laughed to think that the breakers werereaching for him--that they would have had him fast in the trap had heslept much longer; for, in a glance, he thought he had made sure thathis escape from the rock was not yet cut off. But his laugh was touchedwith some embarrassment when he found, upon trial, that the sea hadblocked the path by which he had reached the foot of Shag Cliff.
"I must go 'tother way," he thought.
There was no other way; to right and to left the sea was breakingagainst overhanging juts of rock. He could pass from jut to jut, but hecould round neither.
"Sure, I'll be late for dinner," he thought; "an' dad won't like it."
It was all very well to exclaim vexatiously, but he was forced toabandon the hope of returning by way of the foot of the cliffs. Thetide had cut him off.
"I'll scale Shag Cliff," he determined.
He was not alarmed; the situation was awkward, but it promised theexcitement of an adventure, and for a time he was rather glad that hehad fallen asleep. To scale the two hundred feet of Shag Cliff--thatwas something to achieve! His father would say that he was "narvy," andforget that he had kept him from his dinner. Scale Shag Cliff, by allmeans!
He knew well enough that he had but to seek higher ground and wait forthe tide to fall, if he wanted an unexciting return; but it pleased himto make believe that his situation was desperate--that the rising waterwould overwhelm him if he did not escape over the brow of the cliff: anindulgence which his imagination did not need half an hour later. Whenhe looked up, however, to choose a path of ascent, he found that, fromwhere he stood, close against the cliff at the base, there seemed to beno path at all.
"I 'low I'll have t' go back t' Nanny's Rock for a better squint," hetold himself.
Back to Nanny's Rock he went, at no small risk, for the occasionalflow of foam, which had cut it off from the mainland when first hecrossed, had swollen to a strait of some depth and strength. He mustmake the leap, but he dreaded it. There was a moment of terror when hisfoot slipped, and he came near falling back into the very claws of thebreaker which followed him; on that account, perhaps, his survey ofthe face of the cliff was a hurried one, and his return to safe groundprecipitate and somewhat flurried.
He had seen enough, however, to persuade him that the ascent would becomparatively easy for at least a hundred feet, and that, for the restof the way, it would not, probably, be much more difficult.
In point of fact, he knew nothing whatever of what lay beyond the firsthundred feet. But the element of probability, or rather improbability,did not disconcert him. He could at least make a start.
If you have ever climbed about a rocky sea-coast, you will knowthat an ascent may be comparatively simple where a descent is quiteimpracticable; you will know that the unwary may of a sudden reacha point where to continue the climb is a nauseating necessity.There are times when one regrets the courage that led him into hisdifficulty--the courage or the carelessness, as the case may be.
Experience had long ago taught Billy Topsail that; but the lesson hadnot been severe--there had been no gulf behind him; the whip of life ordeath had not urged him on. Indeed, he had never attempted a climb ofsuch height and ugly possibilities in the way of blind leads as ShagCliff, else possibly he should not have made the start with a sense ofadventure so inspiring.
Up he went--up and still up, his cheeks glowing, his nerves pleasurablytingling! Up--up and still up, until he could hear the whiz of gulls'wings near him, and the feeling of space below began to try his nerves.At last he stopped to rest and look about. Down deep lay the breakers,so far off, it seemed, that he marvelled he could hear the roar andcrash so distinctly.
"An' they says 'tis a hundred feet!" thought he. "Hut! 'Tis two hundredif 'tis an inch. An' I isn't but half way up!"
Beyond that point his difficulties began. The cliff was bolder; it wasalmost bare of those little ledges and crevices and projections uponwhich the cliff-climber depends for handhold and foothold. Moreover,the path was interrupted from time to time by sheer or overhangingrock. When he came to these impassable places, of course, he turned toright or left, content with his progress if only he mounted higher andhigher. Thus he strayed far off the path he had picked out from Nanny'sRock; indeed, he was climbing blindly, a thoughtless course, for--hadhe but stopped to think--there was no knowing that the cliff did notoverhang at the end of the way he had taken.
Meanwhile, time was passing. He had climbed with such caution, retracedhis steps, changed his course so often that noon was long past. So whennext he ca
me to a roomy ledge he sat down to rest before proceedingfarther.
"Wonderful queer!" he thought, after a look about. "But where is I?"
It was a puzzling question. The cliff, projecting below him, cut offhis view of the breakers; and the rock above, which came to an end inblue sky, was of course unfamiliar. At what part of Shag Rock he thenwas he could not tell.