He then cast the bottle into the profundity below. No sound followed its descent: and the fall of a sixty-four-pound shot would have caused none there. He tied the rope round his body, under the arm-pits, but with considerable difficulty, as his hands trembled like aspen leaves. "All ready? heave away!" he shouted. After a time the rope was tightened from above; a few sharp tugs followed, as if those who sought to save him wished to assure themselves that all was secure below. Then followed the familiar "Yeo-heo!" of merchant seamen when pulling together, and Morley felt his scalp bristling as he was lifted off his feet and swung into mid-air. The hated ledge of rock--hated, though, but for its lucky intervention, he must long ago have "slept the sleep that knows no waking"--receded below him, and he was dragged up the face of the bluff so speedily that all his care was requisite, by the use of hands and feet, to save his face and knees from being bruised and torn. At last he reached the verge--that awful verge, close to where the tufts of grass had parted in his seeming death-grasp. Here a stoppage, a trivial delay, occurred; Morley was too blind and giddy to know why or wherefore, but he was not without fear that the knot his feeble hands had tied might break loose, or that the chafed cord might part, here, as it were, upon the threshold of the world and a new lease of existence; nor did he feel secure until he felt himself grasped bodily by the strong hands of several sturdy seamen, dragged in, as it were, and landed like a huge fish on the grass. Pale, panting, weak, weary, and becoming breathless, he fainted outright. "Here's a coil, mate," said one of the seamen. "The poor fellow has gone right off into a swound, and is as useless as a wet swab." "What's to be done now, Mr. Morrison?" asked another. "We can't leave him, dying, it may be, of starvation," replied the seaman addressed--one in authority, apparently, and who spoke English correctly, but with a Scottish accent. "No house is nearer than yonder hamlet. He is well rigged, and don't look like a poor samphire gatherer, after all. How the dickens did he get up or get down there, unless on a grey gull's back?" "Take a leg and an arm, Bill. Heave ahead. We must get him down from this 'tarnal steep bluff, somehow." And, carrying Morley as carefully as they could, the seamen, who were six in number, proceeded downwards by the narrow path which led to the beach. So intent had these worthy fellows been on their humane operations, that they had completely failed to observe how the dense clouds had been banking up to seaward; how the waves were curling up, white and frothy, and how the wind was freshening, till it swept the spoon-drift off each foaming crest, into the trough between; or how the ship had doused her royals, and handed her topgallant-sails, to make all snug for the coming blast.