Patricia Wentworth - The Benevent Treasure

Miss Silver – #26, 1953

The ledge was about six inches wide. Candida stood on it with her toes stubbed against the rock. Her left hand was clenched on a small projecting knob about level with the top of her head. With the other she was feeling carefully and methodically for something which she could catch hold of on her right. There didn’t seem to be anything, but she went on feeling. In the end she had to come back to the shallow crack which she had discarded. It would only take the tips of her fingers. By itself it really wasn’t any good, but it did just give the least little help to the hand that was clutching the knob. She stood there and wondered what she was going to do next.

There wasn’t very much that she could do. In fact, to be quite frank and plain with herself, there wasn’t anything at all. She had got as far as she could. She couldn’t possibly get any farther. If she looked up, she could see the ledge which she had been hoping to reach. That is to say, she could see the jutting rock which was the under part of the ledge, and it was like a great stone buttress thrusting out from the cliff and thrusting her away. There was no conceivable means by which she could get past that overhang – not unless she were a fly and could crawl upside down. She didn’t let herself look at the beach, because of course that was the stupidest thing you could do. But whether she looked or not, she knew very well what she would see – sharp black rocks, and the tide coming racing in. If it had been deep sea that you could jump off into, she would have let herself go and have tried for a better place to climb, but you would want to know that there was a great deal of water over those rocks before you would take a chance with them. Better think about something else. Quickly.

It was a funny thing about that ledge. Seen from below, it didn’t look as if it would be all that difficult to reach. The overhang didn’t show like this. She had been quite pleased and confident about reaching it – right up to the very last moment when there was no more foothold or fingerhold and the thing stuck out over her head like the underside of a doorstep.

Well, she couldn’t go on, and it wasn’t any use going back. She wasn’t quite sure how far she had climbed – twenty feet – thirty – forty… But all the way up from the rocks and the sea there wasn’t anything that would be better than this, and it was always harder to climb down.

If you can’t go on and you can’t go back, there is only one thing you can do, and that is stay where you are. The thing that whispers in your mind and always has something horrid to say said softly, ‘And how long can you do that?’ Candida had been brought up to have a short way with the whispering thing. She spoke back to it with spirit.

‘As long as I choose!’

The thing refused to be snubbed.

‘It will be dark in less than an hour. You can’t stand here all night.’

Candida said, ‘I can stand here as long as I’ve got to.’ She clenched her fingers on the rocky knob and called, ‘Cooee! Cooee!’

Things can’t talk to you when you are calling with all your might, but the sound went out of her against the cliff wall and flattened there. Anyone would have to have very sharp ears if they were to hear it against the noise of the tide coming in.

Stephen Eversley had very sharp ears. He was some way out, because even if you knew the coast as well as he did, you didn’t take a boat in past the Black Sisters if you could help it. He was making for the narrow bay which the smugglers used to use. A trap if you didn’t know your way, safe enough if you did. Sound carries over water, and the way the cliff curved favoured Candida’s cry. He heard it and looking shoreward he saw her dark against the rock in her schoolgirl serge. It was not yet dusk but the air had begun to thicken.

He rowed in as far as he dared. He mustn’t make it too far, but he had to get within hailing distance, and he thought he could do that. Without word from her, there was no deciding what to do next. If she had a reasonable foot and hand hold, he could land in the cove, fetch help, and get at her from the top of the cliff. But if she couldn’t be sure of holding on, he would have to work along the rock face to the ledge just over her head and get her up on to that. The rope he had in the boat would be long enough. It would mean staying there all night, because by the time they were through it would be too dark to get back along the cliff. It was going to be a tricky business anyhow.

As soon as he got near enough he called out to her.

‘Hi! You there on the cliff! What sort of hold have you got?’

The answer came back faintly and in one word.

‘Fair!’

‘Can – you – hold – on – for – say – forty – minutes?’

Even as he said it, he knew she couldn’t.

He got back two words.

‘I’ll – try.’

It wasn’t good enough. He would have to make it single-handed. He called again.

‘I’ll – get – to – you – before – that! About – a – quarter – of – an – hour! I’ll – be – seeing – you! Hold – on!’

It was much easier to hold on now that she knew help was coming. The nasty whispering voice went away and she began to make pictures in her mind. Not the horrid sort which showed you all the things you were shutting your eyes against – a dead drop down to the beach and wet black rocks with points as sharp as needles. Not that kind at all, but the romantic sort out of the old long-ago tales – Andromeda chained to a cliff in Greece with the monster coming in out of a blue sea, and Perseus flashing down with wings on his feet to turn the looming horror into stone.

The time went by.

It was only when she heard Stephen on the cliff that she was afraid again. The sound came from away to the left, and all at once she began to wonder how he was going to reach her, and whether she could go on holding on. Her feet were stiff and numb with all her weight thrown forward. She couldn’t really feel her fingers any more. Suppose they just slid away from the stone and she tilted over – outwards – and back – and down. But when he spoke from the ledge over her head and said, ‘Are you all right?’ she heard herself say, ‘Yes.’

A rope came dangling down. It had a noose at the end of it. What she had to do was to get it under her armpit. She would have to let go of the crack on her right and work the rope along until it was over her head and supporting the shoulder. Stephen lay on the ledge and looked over it and told her what to do. All the things were impossible, but he had the sort of voice that made you feel you could do impossible things, and somehow they got done.

When the rope was round her body, she had to edge to the left along the crack until there wasn’t really any foothold at all. She couldn’t have done it without the rope. It brought her just far enough out from under the overhang for him to be able to drag her up on to the ledge.

She lay on the rough stone and there was no more strength in her. She felt like a doll with the sawdust all run out – horrid limp arms and legs and a wobbling head. And then a hand on her shoulder, and a voice which said,

‘You’re all right now. Be careful how you move – the ledge isn’t very wide.’

Oddly enough, that made her feel worse than anything else. There were pins and needles in her hands and feet, and something that went round and round in her head. Before she knew what she was doing she was feeling for his hand and clutching it as if she would never let it go. That was one of the things she was ashamed about afterwards. As soon as she could get hold of her voice she said, ‘How much room is there?’ and he laughed.