way across the grey shadow fell a
strange beam of dusky brilliance, which cast its flickering light upon a
wilderness of waving sea-weeds. Even in the desperate position in which
he found himself, there survived in the vagabond's nature sufficient
poetry to make him value the natural marvel upon which he had so
strangely stumbled. The immense promontory, which, viewed from the
outside, seemed as solid as a mountain, was in reality but a hollow
cone, reft and split into a thousand fissures by the unsuspected action
of the sea for centuries. The Blow-hole was but an insignificant cranny
compared with this enormous chasm. Descending with difficulty the steep
incline, he found himself on the brink of a gallery of rock, which,
jutting out over the pool, bore on its moist and weed-bearded edges
signs of frequent submersion. It must be low tide without the rock.
Clinging to the rough and root-like algae that fringed the ever-moist
walls, John Rex crept round the projection of the gallery, and passed at
once from dimness to daylight. There was a broad loop-hole in the side
of the honey-combed and wave-perforated cliff. The cloudless heaven
expanded above him; a fresh breeze kissed his cheek and, sixty feet
below him, the sea wrinkled all its lazy length, sparkling in myriad
wavelets beneath the bright beams of morning. Not a sign of the recent
tempest marred the exquisite harmony of the picture. Not a sign of human
life gave evidence of the grim neighbourhood of the prison. From the
recess out of which he peered nothing was visible but a sky of turquoise
smiling upon a sea of sapphire.

The placidity of Nature was, however, to the hunted convict a new source
of alarm. It was a reason why the Blow-hole and its neighbourhood should
be thoroughly searched. He guessed that the favourable weather would be
an additional inducement to McNab and Burgess to satisfy themselves
as to the fate of their late prisoner. He turned from the opening, and
prepared to descend still farther into the rock pathway. The sunshine
had revived and cheered him, and a sort of instinct told him that the
cliff, so honey-combed above, could not be without some gully or chink
at its base, which at low tide would give upon the rocky shore. It grew
darker as he descended, and twice he almost turned back in dread of the
gulfs on either side of him. It seemed to him, also, that the gullet of
weed-clad rock through which he was crawling doubled upon itself,
and led