Reube, call again!" cried Pamela.

There was no answer--there had been no cry, she thought, since the "miss" in the beginning. She waited a moment and then tried again. "Reube--I’m close by--I’m come to help you--where are you?"

All the birds started to shriek and scream with delirious riot. They rose in a cloud, and circled round and round. It was maddening.

"Oh you silly idiots," said Pamela.

As the clatter died down into isolated screams, she heard a voice say: "I bean’t afeard o’ birds, Miss."

"That’s right, Reube," she spoke in a hearty manner, because the words came in a detached weak tone, as though the speaker made an effort to say them.

He must be quite close, she thought.

Down she went again, with infinite care, because the surface of everything was greasy with mist that thickened continually. Down and down, and ever the mutter and wash of waves on rock grew more distinct.

Then the voice called, with more life in it. "Here, Miss! You do be going too far."

Pamela checked and looked round eagerly. Above her, but more to the Ramsworthy side, in the loneliest and most inaccessible bit of the Beak, was a dark heap, a very little heap; and, small as it was, the great part of it consisted of a hump of coarse grass. On the ledge where this grew clung the human part of the heap.

"I see you," said Pamela, in a cheerful tone.

It was an heroic effort on her part, for, looking at the whole situation, up, down, and round, it was distinctly terrifying. After nearly ten minutes cautious climbing, she came within arm’s length of the child.

He was lying on his face, arms grasping a snag of rock at the back of the grass bunch. He had never looked so small to Pamela, and, in an instant, she saw by his face what he had suffered; it was pinched and drawn--stained with tears and dirt.

She laughed. Not because she felt like laughter, but because she had neither water nor food, and something must be done to rouse the failing courage--if they were to get up the fog-shielded height that towered above them.

"I was mortal glad--when I heard you," volunteered Reube, gazing at her with sunken eyes: "I was pretty near asleep."

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