Words of renewed entreaty to desist rose to Winefred's lips, but she could not speak them, and she knew that further remonstrance was profitless. Jack threw a bag across his shoulder, and bound it about his waist.
He stepped to the edge, cast himself flat on the turf and looked over. The end of the rope, attached to the middle of a short pole, swung in space.
'All right, lads,' said he, and slipped over the verge.
Winefred's heart rose, and her head swam, as she saw him disappear. As he went, he looked at her and smiled.
Should the rope give way, should he lose his balance on the crosspole, there was for him a sheer fall of over four hundred feet.
Below were broken masses of rock, fallen from above, about which the sea chafed and frothed, and among which it burrowed.
The cable was strong; it was passed twice round the trunk of the thorn, and was held fast by two lusty youths, who paid out gradually, as required. One of them, turning his head over his shoulder, said to the girl, 'Go below, missie, and see how he manages.'
She made no reply, but turned to obey. Her knees trembled under her, and she was sick at heart. As she descended, tears came coursing down her cheeks. Tears of vexation and of alarm. How would she feel ever after should an accident occur? The wiping her hands with dew could not brush away responsibility. Jack would not have ventured his life had she not urged him to it.
When she had reached the shore she looked up.
The White Cliff is composed of a cap of chalk, a hundred feet thick, striated with beds of flint, and this rests on a series of shelving cherty sandstone beds of a tawny hue. The inclination of these gives to the whole headland an appearance of lurching to its fall.
Water sinking through the chalk oozes through the sand and dissolves it, undermining the white bed above till masses of chalk that have lost all support hurtle down. But the chalk itself is full of cavosities caused by the soft rock being eaten into by the sea-winds. Consequently the entire mass is in incessant decomposition and is crumbling down.
The mist had blown away, and Winefred was able, on looking up, to see the whole cliff towering above her, the white summit caught by the light of the rising sun.