Chapter 2. Our Cliffs

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_ CHAPTER TWO. OUR CLIFFS

I believe the sheep began all the creepy paths in our part of the country--not sheep such as you generally see about farms, or down to market, but our little handsome sheep with curly horns that feed along the sides of the cliffs in all sorts of dangerous places where a false step would send them headlong six or seven hundred feet, perhaps a thousand, down to the sea. For we have cliff slopes in places as high as that, where the edge of the moor seems to have been chopped right off, and if you are up there you can gaze down at the waves foaming over the rocks, and if you looked right out over the sea, there away to the north was Taffyland, as we boys called it, with the long rugged Welsh coast stretching right and left, sometimes dim and hazy, and sometimes standing out blue and clear with the mountains rising up in the distance fold behind fold.

I say I think the sheep used to make the cliff paths to begin with, for they don't feed up or feed down, but always go along sidewise, unless they want to get lower, and then they make a zigzag, so far one way and so far another, backwards and forwards, down the slope till they come to where it goes straight down to the sea with a raw edge at the top, and the cliff-face, which keeps crumbling away, in some places lavender and blue where it is slate, and in others all kinds of tints, as red and grey, where it's limestone or grit.

In the course of time the sheep leave a regular lot of tracks like tiny shelves up the side of the sloping cliffs, and the lowest of these gets taken by the people who are going along the coast, and is trampled down more and more, till it grows into a regular footpath, such as we were going along this hot midsummer day.

Part of our way lay close to the edge of the cliff, where it was about four hundred feet straight down, but a dense wood of oak-trees grew there, and their trunks formed a regular fence and screen between us and the edge, so that the pathway was quite safe, though it would not have troubled us much if it had not been, being used to the place; but in a short time we were through the wood, and out on the open cliff--from shade to sunshine.

I ought not to leave that wood, though, without saying something about it, for just there the trees grew very curiously. Of course you know what an oak-tree is, and how it grows up tall and rugged and strong, but our oak-trees didn't grow like that. You've seen horses out in a field on a stormy day, I suppose, when the wind blows, and the rain beats. If they have no trees, hedges, or wall to get under, they always turn their backs to the wind, and you can see their tails and manes streaming out and blown all over them.

Well there's no shelter out there on our coast, only in the caves, and the oak-trees there do just the same as the horses, for they seem to turn their backs to the wind; and their boughs look as if they are being blown close down to the side of the cliff slope and spread out ready to spring up again as soon as the wind has passed. But they don't, for they stop in that way growing close down and all on one side, and they very seldom get at all big.

That was a capital path as soon as we were out of the wood, running up and down the slope sometimes four, sometimes six or seven hundred feet above the sea, just as it happened, and with the steep cliff above us jagged with great masses of rock that looked as if they were always ready to fall rolling and crashing till they got to the broken edge, when they would leap right down into the sea. Sometimes they did, but only when a thaw came after a severe frost. There was none of that sort of thing though at midsummer, and the overhanging rocks did not trouble us as we scampered along in the bright elastic air, feeling as if we were so happy that we must do something mischievous.

The path was no use to us, it was too smooth and plain and safe, so we went down to the very edge of the precipice, and looked over at the beautiful clear sea, hundreds of feet below, and made plans to go prawning in the rock pools, crabbing when the tide was out, and to get Bigley's father to lend us the boat and trammel net, to set some calm night and catch all we could.

"Think he'll lend it to us, Bigley?" asked Bob.

"I don't know. I'm afraid he won't."

"Why not?" I said. "He did last holidays."

"Yes," said Bigley; "but your father hadn't got the Gap then, and made him cross, for he said he was going to buy it, only your father bought it over his head."

"But had he got the money?" I said.

"Oh, yes. He's got lots of money, though he never spends any hardly."

"He makes it all smuggling," said Bob. "He'll be hung some day, or shot by some of the king's sailors."

Bigley turned on him quickly, but he did not say a word; and just then a stone-chat's nest took his attention. After that we had to go round the end of a combe, as they call the valleys our way, and there we stopped by the waterfall which came splashing down forming pool after pool in the sunny rocks.

It was not to be expected that three boys fresh from school could pass that falling stream without leaping from rock to rock, and penetrating a hundred yards inland, to see if we could find a dipper's nest, for one of the little cock-tailed blackbirds gave us a glimpse of his white collar as he dropped upon a stone, and then walked into a pool, in whose clear depths we could see him scudding about after the insects at the bottom, and seeming to fly through the water as he beat his little rounded wings using them as a fish does fins.

The nest was too cleverly hidden for us to find, so, tiring of the little stream, and knowing that there was one waiting for us in the Gap where we could capture trout, we went on along the cliff path, gossiping as boys will, till we reached the great buttress of rock that formed one side of the entrance to the little ravine, and there perched ourselves upon the great fragments of rock to look down at where the little stream came rushing and sparkling from the inland hills till it nearly reached the sea at the mouth of the Gap, and then came to a sudden end.

It looked curious, but it was a familiar object to us, who thought nothing of the way in which the sea had rolled up a bank of boulders and large pebbles right across the little river, forming a broad path when the tide was down, and as the little river reached it the bright clear stream ended, for its waters sank down through the pebbles and passed invisibly for the next thirty or forty yards beneath the beach and into the sea.

But when the tide was up this pebble ridge formed a bar, over which there was just room for Uggleston's lugger to pass at high-water; and there it was now in the little river, kept from turning down on its side by a couple of props, while the water rippled about its keel.

From where we were perched it looked no bigger than a row-boat, and the house that formed our school-fellow's home--a long, low, stone-built place thatched with reeds--seemed as if it had been built for dolls, while the fisherman's cottage on the other side, where an old sailor friend lived, was apparently about as big as a box.

The scene was beautiful, but to us boys its beauty lay in what it offered us in the way of amusement.

We were not long in deciding upon a ride down one of the clatter streams--a ride that, though it is very bad for the breeches and worse for the boots, while it sometimes interferes with the skin of the knuckles, and may result in injury to the nose, is thoroughly enjoyable and full of excitement while it lasts.

You don't know what a clatter stream is? Then I'll tell you.

Every here and there, where the slate cliffs run down in steep slopes to the valleys, you can see from the very top to the bottom, that is to say on a slope of some nine hundred feet, what look like little streams that are perhaps a foot wide at the top and ten or a dozen at the bottom where they open out. These are not streams of water, though in wet weather the water does trickle down through them, and makes them its bed, but streams of flat, rounded-edge pieces of slate and shale that have been split off the face of the rock and fallen, to go slowly gliding down one over the other, perhaps taking years in their journey. Some of the pieces are as small as the scraps put in the bottom of a flower-pot, others are as large as house slates and tiles, perhaps larger; but as they go grinding over one another they are tolerably smooth, and form a capital arrangement for a slide.

This thing determined upon we each selected a good broad piece big enough to sit or kneel on, and then began the laborious ascent, which, I may at once tell you, is the drawback to the enjoyment, for, though the coming down is delightful, the drag up the steep precipitous slope, with feet frequently slipping, is so toilsome a task that two or three slides down used to be always considered what Dr Stacey at Barnstaple School called _quantum sufficit_.

As a matter of course we were soon tired, but we managed three, starting from right up at the top, and close after one another, with the stones beneath us rattling, and sometimes gliding down swiftly, sometimes coming to a standstill; but if it was the foremost, those behind generally started him again.

In this case Bob went first, I followed, and Bigley came last, and though we two stuck more than once, he never did, his weight overcoming the friction of the stones to such an extent that, towards the last, he charged down upon us and we all rolled over together into a heap.

We tried again, but the fall had made Bob disagreeable. I don't think he was much hurt, but he pretended to be, and said that Bigley had done it on purpose.

It was of no use for Bigley to protest. Once Bob had made up his mind to a thing he would not give in, so after about half a slide down we stopped short without being driven on again by our companion, and the game was voted a bore.

"'Tisn't as if there were a couple of sailors at the top with a capstan, to haul you up again when you've slid down," said Bob.

"Ah, I wish there were!" cried Bigley, "I get so tired."

"No rope would pull you up; you're too heavy," sneered Bob. "Never mind, Sep, let's do something else. The clatter streams ain't half so slippery as they used to be. I s'pose we may do something else here though it is your father's place?"

"Don't be so disagreeable," I cried.

"Who's disagreeable?" he retorted. "I didn't make the stones stick and old Bigley come down squelch on us, did I?"

"Oh, if you want to quarrel, Bob, we may as well go home," I said.

"There, just hark at him, Big! Quarrel! Just as if I wanted to quarrel. There, I shall go."

"No, no, don't go, Bob," I cried.

"No, no, don't go, Bob," chimed in Big. "It's holidays now, and we can get up a row when we're at school."

The force of this, and its being waste of time now the long-expected holidays had come, made an impression on Bob, who sat down and began sending rounded pieces of slate skimming through the air towards the little stream.

"Didn't I tell you I didn't want to quarrel," he grumbled out. "I ain't so fond of--there, you chaps couldn't do that."

"Ha! Ha! Couldn't we?" I cried, as a stone he threw went plash into the stream, and I jerked a piece of slate so far that it went right over.

This made Bob jump up, and, as there was plenty of ammunition, the old contention was forgotten in the new, Bigley Uggleston joining in and helping us throw stones till we grew tired, when we looked round for something fresh to do.

"Let's climb right to the top of Bogle's Beacon," I said, as my eyes lit upon the highest crags at our side of the ravine.

"Oh, what's the good?" said Bigley. "It'll make us so hot."

"Get out, you great lazy fellow," cried Bob, whose lips had been apart to oppose my plan; but as soon as Bigley took the other side he was all eagerness to go.

"Oh, all right then," said Bigley. "I don't mind. If you're going I shall come too; but wait a minute."

As he spoke he set off at a trot down the slope, and as we two threw ourselves down to watch him, we saw him run on and on till he reached the smuggler's cottage, and go round to the long low slate-roofed shed where his father kept his odds and ends of boat gear, and then he dived in out of sight.

"What's he gone for?" said Bob.

"Dunno," I said lazily as I turned over on my chest and kicked the loose slates with my toes. "Yes, I do."

"No, you don't," said Bob sourly.

"Yes, I do; he's gone to get a bit of rope. Don't you remember when we climbed up last year we didn't get quite to the top, and you said that if we'd had a bit of rope to throw over the big stone, one of us might have held the end while the other climbed up?"

"No, I don't remember, and don't believe I ever said so."

"Why, that you did, Bob. What's the good of contradicting?"

"What's that to you, Sep Duncan?" he retorted. "You arn't everybody. I shall contradict if I like."

"But you did say so."

"I didn't."

"You did. Now, just you wait till old Big comes and see if he don't say so too."

"Yah! He'd say anything. What does he know about it?"

"Well, here he comes," I said.

"Let him come; I don't care."

"And he has got a coil of rope over his shoulder."

"Well, what do I care? Any fool might get a ring of rope over his shoulder."

"Yes, but what for?"

"Oh, I dunno; don't bother!" said Bob surlily.

Meanwhile Bigley Uggleston was coming along at a lumbering trot, and as soon as he was within hearing I shouted to him:

"What are you going to do with that rope?" And now for the first time I noticed that he was carrying a long iron bar balanced in his right hand.

Big did not answer, but came panting on.

"There, I told you so!" cried Bob; "didn't I say so?"

"I don't care if you did," I retorted; and just then our companion panted up to us and threw himself down, breathless with his exertions.

"What did you fetch the rope for?" I cried eagerly.

"To"--puff--"throw it over"--puff--"the big stone"--puff--"up atop, same"--puff--"as Bob Chowne said"--puff--"last year."

"There!" I cried triumphantly, turning on Bob.

I was sorry I had spoken directly after, for Bob tightened his lips and half shut his eyes as he rose slowly to his feet, thrust his hands in his pockets, and began to move off.

"Here, what are you going to do?" I cried.

"Going home."

"What for?"

"What for? Where's the use o' stopping? You keep on trying to pick a quarrel with a fellow."

"Why, I don't, Bob. I say, don't go. We're just going to have no end of fun."

"Yes," cried Big; "and I've brought one of my father's net bars to drive in the rock and fasten the rope to, and then no one need hold it."

"No, I sha'n't stop," grumbled Bob sourly. "Where's the use o' stopping with chaps as always want to quarrel?"

"I don't want to quarrel," I said.

"And I'm sure I don't," said Big. "I hate it."

"More don't I," growled Bob. "It's Sep Duncan; he's always trying to have a row with somebody."

"Here, come on," cried Big. "I've got the rope and the bar."

"No," said Bob, sticking his hands farther into his pockets and sidling off; "I'm going home."

"Oh, I say, don't spoil our fun, Bob," I cried.

"'Taint me; it's you," he said. "I sha'n't stay."

"Oh, if it's me I'm very sorry," I said, "I didn't mean to be disagreeable."

"Oh, well, if you're sorry and didn't mean to be disagreeable I'll stay," he said. "Only don't you do it again."

"Say you won't," whispered Big.

"Well, I won't do it again," I cried, though I felt all the time as if I wanted to laugh outright.

"Then I sha'n't say any more about it," said Bob, relenting all at once. "I say, Big, is that rope strong?"

"Strong enough to hold all of us," he replied. "Here, come along. It'll soon be dinner-time. I'm getting hungry now."

"Why, you're always hungry, Big," cried Bob as we began to climb the steep slope diagonally.

"Yes, I am," he assented. "I do eat such a lot, and then I always feel as if I wanted to eat a lot more."

It was a stiff climb over the loose slates and in and out among the rough masses of stone that projected every here and there; but the air grew fresher and cooler as we made our way from sheep-track to sheep-track, where the little brown butterflies kept darting up in our path; and as we stopped again and again, it was to get a wider view of the sail-dotted sea all rippling and sparkling like silver in the sun, while as we climbed higher still we began to get glimpses of the high hills along the coast to the west, and the great moor into which the Gap seemed to run like a rugged trough.

At last after many halts we reached the piled-up mass of rocks known as the Beacon--a huge heap of moss-grown grey fragments that stood on the very crest of the ridge.

It was a favourite place with us, and many an expedition had been made here to sit under the shelter of the great lump of rock that crowned the heap, a mass about fifteen feet high, and as many long and broad, the whole forming just such a cube as you find in the sugar basin, and whose sides were so perpendicular that we had never reached the top.

But this time, provided with rope, and, by Bigley Uggleston's forethought, with the iron bar, the ascent seemed easy, and we set about it at once.

Big soon found a place on the shoulder of our little mountain where blocks of a ton-weight and less lay around, some of them so weakened and overhanging that they looked as if a touch would send them thundering down into the gorge.

Between two of these Big drove in the long iron bar, the rope was thrown right over the rock, one end tied securely to the bar, the other held by Bigley on the other side, the great heavy fellow hanging on to it, and the question arose as to whether Bob or I was to make the first attempt.

I wanted to go, but I felt that if I did, Bob would be affronted, so I gave way and let him lead, giving him a hoist or two as he seized the rope, and climbed, and scratched, and kicked, and got up half-way and then slid down again.

"Here, Big," he shouted, "what's the good of bringing such a stupid little thin rope? It's no good."

"Can't you get up?" cried Big.

"No, nor anyone else. It's no use. Let's get back."

"No, no; let me try," I cried eagerly.

"Don't I tell you it's of no use," he said angrily. "Here, I'll go again and show you. Hold on tight, Big."

"Yes, I'm holding," came from deep down in Bigley's chest, and Bob made another attempt, scrambling up over my back and on to my shoulders, and ending in his struggles by giving me so severe a kick on the head that I leaped away, leaving him hanging by his hands, so that when he relaxed his hold he came down in a sitting position, with so hard a bump upon the stones that he seemed to bounce up again in a fit of fury to begin stamping about with rage and pain.

"Oh--oh--oh!" he gasped. "You did that on purpose."

"Oh, I say, you do make me laugh," spluttered out Bigley, who held on tightly to the rope to keep it strained.

"Yes, I'll make you laugh," cried Bob, flying at him and punching away, while Bigley held on by the rope, and the more Bob punched the more he laughed.

"Oh, I say, don't," he panted. "You hurt."

"I mean to hurt," cried Bob. "You and Sep Duncan got that up between you, and he did it to make you laugh."

"I didn't say you kicked me on the ear on purpose," I grumbled. "Oh, I say, Bob, your boot-toe is hard."

"Wish it had been ten times harder," he snarled.

"Oh, never mind," said Bigley, "I'm getting tired of holding the rope. Why don't you climb up? Make haste!"

"I'm going home," grumbled Bob. "If I had known you were two such fellows I wouldn't have come."

"Here, you get up, Sep," cried Bigley. "I'll stand close up to the rock, and you can climb up me, and then lay hold of the rope."

"No, no," I whispered; "it would only make Bob savage."

"Never mind; he'll come round again. He won't go--he's only pretending."

I glanced at our school-fellow, who was slowly shuffling away some twenty or thirty yards down the slope, and limping as he went as if one leg was very painful.

"Here, Bob!" I cried, "come and have another try."

He did not turn his head, and I shouted to him again.

"Here, Bob, mate, come and have another try."

He paid no heed; but while I was speaking Bigley placed himself close to the great rock, reaching up as high as he could, and holding on by the rope with outstretched arms.

"Now, then, are you ready?" he cried.

The opportunity was too tempting to be resisted, and making a run and a jump, I sprang upon his broad back, climbed up to his shoulders, got hold of the rope, and steadied myself as I drew myself into a standing position, and then reaching up the rope as high as I could, I managed to get my toes on first one projection, then upon another, and in a few seconds was right at the top.

Bigley burst into a hoarse cheer, and began to jump about and wave his cap, with the effect of making Bob stop short and turn, and then come hurrying back more angry than ever.

"There: you are a pair of sneaks," he cried. "What did you go and do that for?"

"I helped him," said Bigley. "Hoo--rayah!"

"Yes, and I'll pay you for it," he snarled; but Bigley was too much excited to notice what he said; and, taking hold of the rope again, he planted himself against the rock to turn his great body into a ladder.

"Go on up, Bob, and then you two chaps can pull me up to you."

The temptation was too great for Bob, who began to climb directly, and had nearly reached where I stood, when I bent down and held out my hand.

"Catch hold, Bob!" I cried, "and I'll help you."

"I can get up by myself, thank you," he cried very haughtily, and he loosed his hold with one hand to strike mine aside.

It was a foolish act, for if I had not snatched at him he would have gone backwards, but this time he clung to me tightly, and the next minute was by my side.

"Oh, it's easy enough," he said, forgetting directly the ugly fall he had escaped.

"Here, now, you two lay hold of the rope and pull me up!" shouted Bigley. "I want to come too."

We took hold of the rope and tightened it, and there was a severe course of tugging for a few minutes before we slackened our efforts, and sat down and laughed, for we might as well have tried to drag up any of the ton-weight stones as Bigley.

"Oh, I say," he cried; "you don't half pull. I want to come up."

"Then you must climb as we pull," I said, and in obedience to my advice he fastened the rope round his waist, and tried to climb as we hauled, with the result that after a few minutes' scuffling and rasping on the rock poor Bigley was sitting down rubbing himself softly, and looking up at us with a very doleful expression of countenance.

"You can't get up, Big; you're too heavy," cried Bob, who was now in the best of tempers. "Here, let's look round, Sep."

That did not take long, for there were only a few square feet of surface to traverse. We were up at the top, and could see a long way round; but then so we could fifteen or twenty feet below, and at the end of five minutes we both were of the same way of thinking--that the principal satisfaction in getting up to the summit of a rock or mountain was in being able to say that you had mastered a difficulty.

Bob thoroughly expressed my feelings when, after amusing himself for a few minutes by throwing dry cushions of moss down at Bigley, he exclaimed:

"Well, what's the good of stopping here? Come on down again!"

"I'm ready," I said, "only I wish old Big had come up too."

"I don't," said Bob; "what's the good of wishing. I'm not going to make my hands sore with tugging. He had no business to grow so fat."

"I should like to come up," cried Bigley dolefully.

"Ah, well, you can't!" shouted back Bob. "Serves you right pretending to be a man when you're only a boy."

"I can't help it," replied Bigley with a sigh.

"Let's have one more try to have him up," I cried.

"Sha'n't. What's the good? I don't see any fun in trying to do what you can't."

"Never mind: old Big will like it," I said. "Come on."

Bob reluctantly took hold of the rope, and after giving a bit of advice to our companion, he made another desperate struggle while we pulled, but the only result was that we all grew exceedingly hot and sticky, and as Bigley stood below, red-faced and panting with his efforts, Bob put an end to the project by sliding down the rope to his side, so there was nothing left for me to do but to follow.

This I did, but not till I had had a good long look round from my high perch at the deeply-cut ravine with its rugged piled-up masses of cliff, and tiny river, to which it seemed to me I was now the heir. _

Read next: Chapter 3. A Gunpowder Plot

Read previous: Chapter 1. Self And Friends

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