was a cry, a jerk, and the midshipman was down on his chest, as he
had fallen, clinging to the edge, for the young smuggler seemed to have
been snatched from his arms, and was now lying thirty feet below on the
edge of a sloping rock, part of his body without support, and apparently
about to glide off into the waves below.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN.

Archy shuddered, his eyes grew fixed, and his whole body seemed to be
frozen. The minute before he had been burning with rage, and struggling
to gain the mastery over his enemy; now he would have given anything to
have undone the past.

"Ram!" he cried excitedly,--"Ram, my lad, turn over quickly, and lay
hold, or you will be off."

There was no reply. Ram's face looked ghastly, and his eyes were
closed.

"I've killed him! I know I have!" cried Archy excitedly; and he
strained himself more over the edge of the rock, to gaze wildly about
for a means of descent, but there was only one: if he wished to get down
to where the boy lay, apparently about to slip off into the sea, there
was only one way, and that was to jump. Thirty feet! And if he did
jump, he could not do so without coming down in contact with the boy,
perhaps right on him, when it seemed as if a touch of a finger would
send him headlong into the sea.

"What shall I do?" thought the midshipman. "It is horrible. Ram!" he
shouted. "Rouse up! For goodness' sake, speak! Try to creep farther
on to the rock. Oh, help I help!"

He shouted this frantically, but a wild and mournful cry from a gull was
the only response, and his voice seemed to be utterly lost in the vast
space around.

"I shall have murdered the poor fellow," groaned Archy; and he stared
about wildly again, in search of some means of getting to his adversary.

None--none whatever. It would have been madness to jump, and he knew
it--death--certain death to both. No one could have leaped down that
distance on to a shelf of rock without serious injury, and then it would
have been impossible to save himself from the rebound which must have
sent him headlong into the sea below. This even if the shelf had not
already been occupied; and Ram lay there, evidently stunned, if not
killed.

What did Mr Brough and old Gurr always say? "_Be cool in
danger_--_never lose your nerve_!"

"Yes, that was it!" he said, as he recalled lessons that he had received
again and again. But what could he do? Even as he gazed down, he
momentarily expected