Page:The art of story-telling, with nearly half a hundred stories, y Julia Darrow Cowles .. (IA artofstorytellin00cowl).pdf/233

 captain, of the frigate, who was in the foremost boat. "We're disgraced forever if they do the job without us."

"With your honor's leave," broke in a stalwart young topman, touching his thick brown forelock, "I think I could get up that rock yonder, and fasten a rope for the rest to climb by."

"What! up there?" cried the captain, glancing doubtfully from the young sailor's bright, fearless face to the tremendous height above. "Well, my lad, if you can do it, I'll give you fifty guineas!"

"It's for the honor of the flag, not for the money, sir!" answered the seaman, springing from the boat to the lowest ledge of the terrible rock.

Up, up, up, ever higher he clambered, with the rising wind flinging his loose hair to and fro, and the startled sea-birds whirling around him with hoarse screams of mingled fear and rage. To the watching eyes far below, the tiny points of rock to which he clung were quite invisible, and he seemed to be hanging in mid-air, like a fly on the side of a wall.

And now he was two-thirds of the way up