Page:The New Arcadia (Tucker).djvu/278

268 walls of his prison-house, and to scan with a practised eye the face of the cliff.

The coral rock, up-thrown by volcanic action, and exposed to the climatic influences of ages, was crisp and yielding. A slight foothold would suffice him. He could balance wherever chamois or its hunter could stand.

Out on the face, yard by yard, he cut footsteps, a narrow siding, in a slanting, upward direction. A sharp, flat stone served as chisel. A few yards along the dizzy precipice face he had levelled when night fell. From sheer hunger and exhaustion he slept. The next day, the third, he continued his labours, while the wild-fowl circled about him, and the white foam, restless to receive him, laved the rocks hundreds of feet below. Before the sun sank his task was accomplished. Out upon the cliff top the captive tottered, blood streaming from the hands that had torn a pathway from a living grave, suspended, like Mahomet's, between heaven and earth. He staggered to the knoll where the mate had slept. A blood-stained handkerchief he waved, shouting till the sea-birds, sweeping in wonder around, drowned his cries with their screeches. Away, towards the horizon, was a dark spot on the water, and a lingering line of smoke, that seemed unwilling to leave him to his fate.

"Lost and cast away!" he cried, as he grovelled on the hill-top, and wondered why the cruel ledge should have intercepted his descent to oblivion. "For the first time and last," he bitterly thought as he dragged himself down to the cave he had stocked, "has the provision I have made for others brought benefit to myself."

Water, fresh and tasteless, was procured, by sinking in the sands a few feet above high-water mark. Fish and mutton-birds with their eggs, cocoa-nuts and roots, served