The Rocks of Valpré | Page 7

went within as one on business bent.
He was absent for some seconds, and soon a large wave broke with a long roar and rushed swirling into the cave. As the gleaming water ran out again, he emerged.
A single glance was sufficient to show him that retreat by way of the beach was already cut off. He recognized the fact with a rueful grimace. The long green waves tumbling along the rocks were rising higher every instant.
With a quick glance around him, the young man sprang for an upstanding rock, reached it in safety, and paused, keenly studying the black face of the cliff.
It frowned above him like a rampart, gloomy, terrible, impregnable. He shrugged his shoulders with another grimace, then, as the foam splashed up over his feet, leaped lightly onto another rock higher than the first, whence it was possible to reach a great buttress that jutted outwards from the cliff itself.
Once upon this, he began to climb diagonally, clambering like a monkey, availing himself of every inch that offered foothold. A slip would have meant instant disaster, but this fact did not apparently occur to him, or if it did he was not dismayed thereby. He even presently, as he cautiously worked his way upwards, began to hum again in gay snatches the song that a child's clear eyes had set running in his brain that afternoon.
It was a progress that waxed more perilous as he proceeded. The waves dashed themselves to cataracts below him. Return was impossible, and many would have deemed advance equally so. But he struggled on, maintaining his zigzag course upwards, with nerve unfailing and spirits unimpaired.
Gulls flew out above his head and circled about him with indignant protests. He looked somewhat like a gigantic gull himself, his slim white figure outlined against the darkness of the cliff. He cried back to the startled birds reassuringly in their own language, but the commotion continued; and presently, finding precarious foothold on a narrow ledge halfway up, he stopped to wipe his forehead and laugh with merriment unfeigned. He was plainly in love with life--one in whose eyes all things were good, but yet who loved the hazard of them even better.
The ledge did not permit of much comfort. Nevertheless he managed to turn upon it and to lean back against the cliff, with his brown face to sky and sea. He even, after a moment, took out a cigarette and lighted it. The sun shone full in his eyes, and he seemed to revel in it. A sun-worshipper also, apparently!
He smoked his cigarette to the end very deliberately, flicking the ash from time to time towards the raging water below. When he had quite finished, he stretched his arms wide with a gesture of sublime self-confidence, faced about, and very composedly continued his climb.
It grew more and more arduous as he neared the frowning summit. He had to feel his way with the utmost caution. Once he missed his footing, and slipped several feet before he could recover himself, and after this experience he took a clasp-knife from his pocket and notched himself footholds where none offered. It was a very lengthy business, and the sun was dipping downwards to the sea ere he came within reach of his goal. The top of the cliff overhung where he first approached it, and he had to work a devious course below it till he came to a more favourable place.
Reaching a gap at length, he braced himself for the final effort. The surface of the cliff here was loose, and the stones rattled continually from beneath his feet; but he clung like a limpet, nothing daunted, and at last his hands were gripped in the coarse grass that fringed the summit. Sheer depth was below him, and the inward-curving cliff offered no possibility of foothold.
He stood, gathering his strength for a last stupendous effort. It was a supreme moment. It meant abandoning the support on which he stood and depending entirely upon the strength of his arms to attain to safety. The risk was desperate. He stood bracing himself to take it.
Finally, with an upward fling of the head, as of one who diced with the gods, he gripped that perilous edge and dared the final throw. Slowly, with stupendous effort, he hoisted himself up. It was the work of an expert athlete; none other would have attempted it.
Up he went and up, steadily, strongly; his head came level with his hands; he peered over the edge of the cliff. The strain was terrific. The careless smile was gone from his lips. In that instant he no longer ignored what lay behind him; he knew the suspense of the gambler who pauses after he has thrown before he lifts the dice-box to read his fate.
Up, and