With this object in view, he continued his way along the rocky platform upon which he was then standing, until he rounded a sharp angle, where it abruptly came to an end, and gave place to a rough, jagged, and broken face, very similar to that which they had ascended on the previous evening. Casting his eye over and up this uneven face, in an effort to pick out the most suitable path, his gaze was arrested by the sight of a bush growing out of the face of the rock. The bush was only some ten feet distant, and he was therefore close enough to it, not only to see that it was evidently a species of wild raspberry, but also to discern the very welcome circumstance that it was literally bending beneath its weight of ripe fruit. He was not long in making his way to the spot where it stood, and then, removing his jacket, and knotting the sleeves round his neck, he, with a seaman's readiness of invention, converted it into a sort of bag, which he rapidly filled to its utmost capacity with the cool, ripe, refreshing juicy fruit. With this he hurried back to the inmates of the cave, and, laying it before them, bade them eat freely, returning himself to the bush, since it lay exactly in the way he intended to take, to satisfy the cravings of his own appetite. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. THE FUGITIVES MAKE GOOD THEIR ESCAPE. Having partaken of as much of the fruit as he deemed prudent, George at once betook himself to the task of climbing the precipice, and was agreeably surprised at the rapidity and ease with which he accomplished the ascent. Now that he was unencumbered with Walford's weight, and was free from the horrible dread which had before haunted him--that a false step on Tom's part might precipitate all hands to the bottom--his confidence in his own powers enabled him to coolly approach and successfully surmount obstacles which, under less favourable conditions, he would have dreaded to face, and in a few minutes he was within a foot or two of the top. Here he deemed it prudent to pause for a moment and survey the path by which he had ascended, so that, in the event of danger, he might be able to effect a rapid retreat. The glance downward which he permitted himself to take, though only momentary, brought on again, though happily only in a mitigated degree, the same feeling of vertigo and nausea from which he had before suffered; and he was obliged to close his eyes for a short time, clinging convulsively to the rock meanwhile, to avoid falling headlong to the bottom.