with his hands his throbbing temples, and, all unnerved, sitting down again to weep.
Some twelve feet below the top of the cliff from which he had fallen was a ledge, invisible from above, that protruded from the face of the rock. Catching on a projecting bush, he fell on the ledge, and rolled inward against the cliff.
Stiff and stunned, he lay all day on the horizontal fissure. Now he opened his eyes and half realized his position; now closing them, dreamed of distant scenes he had hoped so soon to visit. Again he awoke. It was night. He dared not move. Hour after hour he watched for the dawn. Daylight fully revealed his terrible position. A few feet from where he lay, the wall of cliff descended precipitously to the water. Not a goat could clamber to or from that dizzy shelf. Above him arose the cliff, sloping outwards to the sea.
There was no escape. He lay down to die. Possibly a rope might be lowered, but how could the searchers imagine that he had found lodgment on that cliff face? The action of Elms and the expression on his face convinced him that the search would not be protracted longer than he could contrive.
As he thought of the treachery of the man he had befriended, of the Will of which Elms had been mumbling in his fevered ravings, of the incoherent remarks about Malduke, and the document that had been destroyed, the doctor recognized the whole truth. The provision that, with a few lines, he had made for the disposition of the first venture, might be read as applying to the later estate.
The thought of his people and his life's work in the hands of these treacherous intriguers caused him, seeking means of escape, to tear again with his hands the smooth
