But what caught my most interested attention at the moment that the sun's rays set the
cliff's face a-shimmer, was the several black spots which now appeared quite plainly in evidence high across the gorgeous wall close to the forest's top, and extending apparently below and behind the branches.
I have in view three plans for scaling the
cliffs, and the means for carrying out each is in the hold.
Pulling himself together, he ran obliquely away from the
cliff to a point distant from its foot; thereabout he expected to find his man; and thereabout he naturally failed.
By this time all the fight was out of him, so that when I had gathered a few tiny branches from some of the stunted trees that grew in the crevices of the
cliff, and returned to him he permitted me to set his broken leg and bind it in splints.
At first, wisps of smoke arose and curled up the
cliff. Then I could see the red-tongued flames darting in and out through the wood like tiny snakes.
From above it seemed as though rope and
cliff were well-nigh touching, but now, when swinging a hundred feet down, the squire found that he could scarce reach the face of the rock with his foot, and that it was as smooth as glass, with no resting-place where a mouse could stand.
We submerged very slowly and without headway more than sufficient to keep her nose in the right direction, and as we went down, I saw outlined ahead of us the black opening in the great
cliff. It was an opening that would have admitted a half-dozen U-boats at one and the same time, roughly cylindrical in contour--and dark as the pit of perdition.
Let any man bet me ten pound as I shall see
Cliff's Holiday, and I'll go and stand by myself.
Mitchell, [4] endeavoured in vain, first walking and then by crawling between the great fallen fragments of sandstone, to ascend through the gorge by which the river Grose joins the Nepean, yet the valley of the Grose in its upper part, as I saw, forms a magnificent level basin some miles in width, and is on all sides surrounded by
cliffs, the summits of which are believed to be nowhere less than 3000 feet above the level of the sea.
I have said that a thick fringe of green overhung the edge of the
cliff. Out of this there had emerged a black, glistening object.
The wind had by this time backed to the east, and there was a shudder amongst the watchers on the
cliff as they realized the terrible danger in which she now was.
I remember having been much struck with the evidence of denudation, when viewing volcanic islands, which have been worn by the waves and pared all round into perpendicular
cliffs of one or two thousand feet in height; for the gentle slope of the lava-streams, due to their formerly liquid state, showed at a glance how far the hard, rocky beds had once extended into the open ocean.