"The lady she said there'd be trouble," Neddie wailed insistently, "and I ain't going over that rock. No, sir, not when I feel squeamish like I do now." With an angry snort Blodgett hesitated on the very summit of the ledge. "Come on, come on," he said. "Listen dah!" the cook whispered. I thought of savage yells and trampling feet when, crouching on hands and knees, I listened; but I heard none of them. The sound that came to my ears was the faint, distant rumble of surf breaking on rocks. Now Roger spoke sharply: "Steady, men, go slow." "The sea's somewhere beyond us," I said. "Come, come," Blodgett repeated tiresomely in his thin windy voice, "over these rocks and we'll be safe." He was so confident and eager that we were on the very point of following him. I actually leaned out over the edge ready to leap down. Never did a man's strange delusion come nearer to leading his comrades to disaster! The cook raised his hand. "Look--look dah!" He was staring past Blodgett's feet, past my hands, down at the rocks whither we were about to drop. The mist was opening slowly. There was nothing for more than six feet below us--for more than twelve feet. Now the mist eddied up to the rock again; now it curled away and opened out until we could look down to the ghostly, phosphorescent whiteness of waves breaking on rough stones almost directly under us. Blodgett, with a queer, frightened expression, crawled back to Neddie Benson. We were sitting at the brink of a sheer precipice, which fell away more than two hundred feet to a mass of jagged rock on which the sea was booming with a hollow sound like the voice of a great bell. "Well, here we'll have to make our stand if they follow us," said Davie. Although the rest were white with horror at the death we so narrowly had avoided, old Davie did not even breathe more quickly. The man had no more imagination than a porpoise. Gathering in the lee of the rocky ridge, we took stock of our weapons and recovered our self-possession. The cook again ran his thumb-nail along the edge of the cleaver; Roger examined the lock of his pistol--I saw a queer expression on his face at the time, but he said nothing; Blodgett sharpened his knife on his calloused palm and the rest of us found clubs and stones. We could flee no farther. Here, if we were pursued, we must fight. But although we waited a long time, no one came. The mist gradually passed off; the stars again shone brightly, and the moon presently peeped out from between the cone-shaped mountains on our eastern horizon. [Illustration] V IN WHICH THE TIDE TURNS [Illustration] CHAPTER XIX IN LAST RESORT "They're not on our heels at all events," said Roger, when we had sat silent and motionless until we were cramped from head to foot. Of our little band, he was by far the least perturbed. "If we should set an anchor watch, we could sleep, turn and turn about. What do you say to that?"