think she fainted. It was just that her forces had failed her. She lay quite motionless in my arms, her red-brown hair a splash of colour against the white sleeve of my coat. But a few yards, as I have said, separated us from the shelf, so I lifted her up. I felt a soft arm steal round my neck as she steadied herself. I glanced at her face. Her eyes were open.
“Hold tight,” I bade her, “and whatever you do, don't look down!”—for at that height the clear drop down the side of the cliff was enough to make an Alpine guide dizzy. Looking steadfastly ahead and fighting down a horrible feeling of giddiness, I carried the girl up the path and at length stood upon the ledge.
It curved round the face of the rock, a mere shelf not more than two paces wide, but slanting inwards, which improved one's foothold. From it the face of the cliff dropped sheer to the nullah hundreds of feet below. I ventured a peep over the side and my brain fairly swam; for I am no hand at heights. From somewhere above us a great bird suddenly went up with a vast flutter and, with a few strokes of its powerful wings, propelled itself through the air until, level with us, it hovered motionless at an immense height above the stony valley.
“I'm going to set you down now,” I said to the girl. “Lie quite still and don't move until I come hack. I'm going along the ledge a bit to see if it broadens out at all or if there's a cave.”
As gently as I could I put her down. The wind blew invigoratingly on the pinnacle of the crag and I hoped it would revive her. I stood and listened. No sound came from below. But I knew that until I found a spot from which we could survey the ascent we should not be safe.
I edged my way along the shelf as it curved round the rock. A few steps brought me in sight of its termination. It ended in nothing; but what caught my eye was the tall pillar chiselled out of the rock upon which the flash from my mirror had rested. Beside it was a low opening in the back wall of the cliff.
The pillar was merely a high expanse of “dressed” stone, as the masons say, which had been carved out of the soft surface of the peak. From pictures I had seen of the images on Esther Island, I knew it to be the first state of one of those uncouth effigies, relics of a departed era, which are found in more than one island of the Southern Seas. The pillar was not inscribed or carved in any way. It stood just as some native mason had left it, waiting for the sculptor's hand.
A touch on my shoulder; Marjorie stood at my side.
“I'm a poor kind of soldier, partner,” she said, “to fail you at the critical moment. I was at the last gasp when you picked me up. How ever did you manage to bring me up here?”
“Don't ask me,” I laughed. “I was terrified for fear you'd look over and get scared...”
“I don't mind heights,” the girl rejoined simply; “we live a great part of the year in our place in Wales, you know, and I've done quite a lot of climbing in my time. Oh! Look! Did you ever see anything so wonderful?”
We were side by side on the ledge with our backs to the pillar, and as she spoke she stretched forth her hand and pointed across the valley. Above the jagged crests of various isolated peaks in the foreground a gigantic solitary image raised its tall black form against the deep azure of the ocean which was spread out to the horizon. Its back set to the sea, its features, stern and enigmatic in expression, turned towards us, and, clearly visible in that transparent atmosphere, it dominated the little rocky plateau on which it stood, dwarfing the tremendous blocks of stone strewn about its base. Before it, as if from a sacrificial altar, a thin spiral of black smoke slowly mounted aloft against the blue sky. It seemed to rise from the ground at the foot of the effigy.
It was, in truth, a wonderful sight, a spectacle of sheer majesty. That lonely Colossus with its cruel face seemed to embody the suggestion of sinister mystery which, I had felt from the first, brooded over Cock Island....
Marjorie gave a little shudder.
“This island frightens me!” she said. “To think of that awful-looking image standing there gazing out across the valley for all these hundreds of years as if it were waiting for something. Somehow it reminds me of that clubfooted man, so hard, so ruthless, so ... patient! Grundt makes my blood run cold!...”
He had not molested her, it appeared. When I had left her to enter our cave on the beach, men had suddenly surrounded her and carried her away to the sheds. There she had been handed back to the custody of the mulatto, who had locked her in the room behind the galley where I had found her.