but I'll try it first," said the lieutenant; and he was
about to start along the perilous little shelf after a short climb, when
Syd suggested that they should have a line thrown to them from the boat.

"Good idea, Belton," said the lieutenant, who hailed the boat, now lying
fifty yards away, and she came in; the rope was thrown to them, made
fast about Syd's chest, and while the lieutenant and the sailor held the
slack ready to pay out, the boy clambered on about twenty feet, and then
stepped boldly out upon the narrow shelf in the face of the almost
perpendicular rock, crept carefully along to the rift, and entered it to
come back and shout all right.

With Syd holding the rope tightly round the edge of the cleft, and the
sailor keeping it fast, the lieutenant had no difficulty in getting
along; the sailor followed, and they passed along a natural passage to
where the rock sloped away sufficiently for them to mount again to a
fairsized ledge, from the end of which there was a ridge of broken rock
giving foothold for climbers. This they surmounted, Syd going up first
like a goat, and holding the rope for his officer, and lowering it in
turn for the sailor.

"Why, Belton," said Mr Dallas, "this place is a natural fortress. All
we should have to do would be to make parapets, and mount some guns.
It's a little Gibraltar in its way."

They went on exploring, or rather climbing from block to block and ledge
to ledge, till after some little difficulty the summit was reached, from
which the lieutenant signalled with a handkerchief, an acknowledgment
being seen from the ship.

The top was a slope of some twenty by thirty yards, and from here as
they looked about over the edge a better idea of the capabilities of the
place could be formed, and they looked down on what only needed a little
of the work of man to make the place impregnable so long as there was no
treachery from within.

The great peculiarity of the rock was, that from where they stood they
could gaze down into a chasm beyond which rose a mass similar to that on
which they stood. In fact, roughly speaking, the stony mount seemed to
have been cleft or split in twain, giving it somewhat the aspect of a
bishop's mitre, save that the lower part between the cleft expanded till
it reached the sea.

"Well," said the lieutenant, in a satisfied tone, as they climbed down
into the chasm, and gazed from the bottom out at either end toward the
sea, in the one case