By Jove, that's a ducking!" he said, as a mighty rush of spray enveloped them as a mountainous sea struck the rock below.

"I think we shall do it.
There's something black down below, I think some part of her still holds together; slowly!" he shouted up, in one of the pauses of the gale, and Hardy's response of "Aye, aye, sir," came down to them.
It was a desperate three minutes; but at the end of that time, bruised, bleeding, half-stunned by the blows, half-drowned by the sheets of water which flew over them, the lads' feet touched the rocks.

These formed a sloping shelf of some thirty feet wide at the foot of the cliff.
The wreck which had appeared immediately under them was forty feet away, and appeared a vague, misshapen black mass.

They had been seen, for they had waved the lantern from the edge of the cliff before starting, and they had several times shouted as they descended, and as they neared the ground, they were delighted at hearing by an answering shout that their labors had not been in vain, and that some one still survived.
"Throw us a rope," Dick shouted at the top of his voice; and in a moment they heard a rope fall close to them.

Groping about in the darkness, they found it, just as a wave burst below them, and, dashing high over their heads, drove them against the rock, and then floated them off their feet.