ok us a mile eastward of the castle, where at the head of
the narrow gully that led from the cliff to the shore, stood Ludar,
pistol in hand, waiting for us. He turned silently as we came up, and,
motioning to us to follow, began at once the steep descent. The cleft
was so narrow that one man could only lower himself at a time, and that
swinging as often as not by his elbows and hands. For me it was harder
work than for the active redshanks. As for Ludar, he stood at the
bottom, while I, with half the troop growling at my back, was stuck
midway. Yet we all reached the bottom in time; and as we did so, the
boom of a gun from the rocks above us told that our men were already
before the castle knocking for entrance.

Then we waded and scrambled in the darkness at the water's edge, till we
came to the base of the great black rock on which the fortress stood.
Often we were wading waist-deep in the pools, and often on hands and
knees drawing ourselves over the surf-swept ledges. Ludar seemed to
know every step of the way, despite the years that had passed since as a
boy he hunted there for sea-birds, nor was he in the humour now to
slacken speed for us who knew not when we put out one foot, where we
should land with the other.

Above us, the noise of the guns was already lost in the thunder of the
waves as they echoed in the cave under the castle rock. It seemed, as
we stood there and looked up, that not a foot further could we go. The
great angry cliff beetled over our heads, and on its very edge, far
above, we might discern against the gloomy sky the dim corner of a
buttress.

But it was not here that Ludar meant us to ascend. "Now, my men," said
he, "put your powder in your bonnets and follow me."

Whereupon he took a step up to his neck in the deep water, and started
to swim. One by one we followed him, armed and clad as we were, into
the angry surf. 'Twas a perilous voyage, and had not the tide been full
and high above the rocks, we should not have come out of it, some of us,
sound in limb or wind. Once or twice as I was flung upwards with a
swirl almost upon the jagged cliff, I thought my last hour was come, and
wondered whose eye would be dim at the news of my end. Then, when, with
a like swirl I was heaved back into the safety of deep water, I thought
what a big venture was this, and who would not follow when Ludar led?

So, I scarce know how, we rounded the mouth of that resounding cave and
stood pa