CHAPTER XI

PROGRESS

When he stood beside them once more on the ledge he told them what he had seen.

"It's a fortress of rock up there, and nothing else," he said. "We may have to climb at least a couple of hundred feet. Have any of you ever done any Alpine work?"

No; they knew nothing of the perils or delights of mountaineering.

"I'm in the same boat," he confessed, "but I've read a lot about it, and I've noticed one thing in our favor--the pitch of the strata is downward towards the land, and that kind of rock face gives the best and safest foothold. Moreover, this cleft, or fault, seems to continue a long way up.

"Now, we haven't a minute to spare. Each hour will find us weaker. The weather, too, is clear, and the rock fairly dry, but wind and rain, or fog, would prove our worst enemies. There is plenty of cordage down below. I'll gather all within reach. It may prove useful."

He seemed to have no more to say, and was stooping to begin the descent when Sturgess grabbed him by the shoulder.

"Wait a second, commodore!" he cried. "You've got your job cut out, and I'll obey orders and keep a close tongue, you bet; but when it comes to collecting rope lengths, that is _my_ particular stunt, as I sell hemp, among other things. You just rest up a while."

Maseden nodded, and made way for a willing deputy. It was only fit and proper that he, too, should conserve his energies.

"'Round the corner to the left," he said, "you'll find a sloping rock.

Some wreckage is lodged in an eddy alongside it. Secure the cordage, and any other odds and ends you think useful. Shin up here with a few rope lengths at once. I want them straight away. Have you a strong knife?"

Yes, Sturgess luckily did possess a serviceable knife. By the time he had handed over a number of rope strands Maseden, helped by the girls, had hauled back the mast, to which he began attaching short loops, or stirrups, about two feet apart. He did not expect that either Madge Forbes or her sister would be able to climb the mast, and it was almost a sheer impossibility that he and Sturgess should carry them time and again. So the mast, after serving twice as a bridge, was now to become a ladder.

Sturgess returned with a curiously mixed spoil--a good deal of rope, a sou'wester, a long, thin line--probably the whip used to establish the connection between bridge and forecastle while parts of the _Southern Cross_ still held together--and the ship's flag, the ensign which was flying at the poop when the ship struck.

Water was dripping off him. Evidently he had either been caught by a sea or had slipped off a rock.

"Accident?" inquired Maseden.

"Not quite. I had to risk something to get these," and he produced from his pockets a dozen large oysters.

No party of _gourmets_ ever sat down to a feast with greater zest than those four hungry people. Probably, in view of the labors and hardships they were yet fated to undergo, the oysters saved their lives. There is no knowing. Human endurance can be stretched to surprising limits, but, seeing that they were destined to taste no other food during twelve long hours of arduous exertion, the value of Sturgess's find can hardly be overrated.

The oysters were of a really excellent species, though under the circumstances they were sure to be palatable, no matter what their actual qualities.

"I suppose I need hardly ask if there are any more to be had?" inquired Maseden, when the meal was dispatched.

"No, sir," grinned Sturgess.

He left it at that, but the others realized that he had probably risked his life more than once in the effort to secure even that modest supply.

The meal, slight though it was, not only gave them a new strength--it brought hope. If only they could win a way to the interior, and reach the land-locked waters of the bay which opened up behind the frowning barrier they must yet scale, in all likelihood they would at least obtain a plentiful store of shell-fish.

Nina Forbes uttered a quaint little laugh as she threw the last empty shell on to the rocks beneath.

"Now," she said, "I am quite ready for the soup and a joint."

"Oh, don't be horrid!" cried Madge. "You've gone and made me feel ravenous again."

"He, or she, who would eat must first labor," said Maseden. "Thanks to friend Sturgess, we've enjoyed a first-rate snack. I've never sampled manna, but I'll back the proteids in three fat oysters against those in a pound of manna any day. Now, let's get to business. If I'm not mistaken we're going to tackle a stiff proposition."

He knotted some stout cord around his own waist and that of each of the others, and slung the longest available coil over his shoulders. Then the mast was fixed in its place across the ravine, and he climbed to the opposite crest by straddling the pole, putting his feet in the loops, and pulling himself up by both hands.

Throwing back the rope, he told Sturgess to see that it was fastened securely to one of the girls on the belt already in position. He purposely refrained from specifying which one. By chance, Madge Forbes stood nearest, and it was she who came.

The crossing was awkward rather than dangerous, and rendered far more difficult by the fact that the unwilling acrobat was compelled to expose her naked limbs. But after the first shock common sense came to her aid, and she straightway abandoned any useless effort to observe the conventions.

Still, she blushed furiously, and was trembling when Maseden caught her hands and helped her to land.

"Thank Heaven we've kept our boots," he said, unfastening the rope.

"Just look at the ground we have to cover, and think what it would mean if our feet were bare."

The comment was merely one of those matter-of-fact bits of philosophy which are most effective in the major crises of life. It was so true that a display of leg or ankle mattered little afterwards.

Nevertheless, a similar ordeal caused Nina to blush, too, but she laughed when Madge cried ruefully:

"What in the world has happened to my ankles? They are scrubbed and bruised dreadfully."

"That was last night's treatment, my dear," said her sister. "I escaped more lightly than you."

"But what do you mean? I felt some soreness, but imagined I knocked myself in coming from the wreck."

"You were in a dead faint, so Mr. Maseden and Mr. Sturgess massaged you unmercifully."

Madge surveyed damages again.

"I must have been very bad if I stood that," she said.

"You'll be worse before we see the other side of this cliff," murmured Nina, casting a critical eye over the precipitous ground in front.

It is not to be wondered at if the girls' hearts quailed at the sight.

They were standing on a sloping terrace, of no great depth, which ended abruptly at the foot of a towering cliff. A little to the right ran the line of the cleft, but so forbidding was its appearance, and so apparently unscalable its broken ledges, that the same thought occurred to each--what if they had but left a narrow, sheltered prison for a wider and more exposed one?

Maseden, however, allowed no time for reflection. He and Sturgess had already dragged the foremast after them, and were shouldering it in the direction of the first hump of rock which seemed to offer a way into the cleft. Any other route was absolutely impossible.

After one last glance at the reef which had slain a gallant ship and so many lives, they quitted the ledge which had proved their salvation. It was then five o'clock in the morning. At four o'clock that afternoon they flung themselves, utterly spent, on a carpet of thick moss which coated the landward slope of the most westerly point of Hanover Island.

Their hands and knees were torn and bleeding, their fingernails broken, their bones aching and their eyes bloodshot. But they had triumphed, though many a time it had seemed that if Providence meant to be kind, an avalanche of loose stones or a slip on treacherous shale would have hurled them to speedy death on the rocks beneath.

On five separate occasions they had found themselves strung out on a narrow ledge which merged to nothingness in the sheer wall of a precipice. Five times had they to go back and essay a different path, often beginning again fifty or even a hundred feet below the point they had reached. They were obliged to drag or carry the heavy topmast every inch of the way, because, without its aid, either as a bridge or a ladder, they could never have surmounted a tithe of the obstacles encountered.

In those eleven awful hours they had climbed not two, but five hundred feet, a distance which, on the level, a good runner would traverse in about twenty seconds, whereas it took them an average of a minute to climb one foot.

The marvel was that the women could have done it at all, even with the help which both men gave unstintedly. During the last weary hours no one uttered an unnecessary word. Each of the four was determined to go on, not for his or her own sake, but for the sake of the others. They were roped together. If one fell, it meant disaster to all. So, with splendid grit, each resolved not to fall so long as hand would hold or foot lodge on the tiniest projection.

But, with final success, came utter collapse. Even Maseden, far stronger physically than Sturgess, fell like a log. True, he had borne far more than his share of the day's toil. No matter what his inmost thoughts, he had never, to outward seeming, lost heart. It was he who always found the new line, he who earliest decided to turn back and try again.