But Jarvo found footing in an instant, and St.
George and Amory pressed closely behind him, Rollo and little Akko silently bringing up the rear and carrying the oil-skins.

Slowly and cautiously as they made their way it was but a few minutes until the three standing on the deck, and Barnay open-mouthed in the dory, saw the sinuous line of the five bodies twist up the tortuous course considerably above the blazoned emblem of the White Blade.
In truth, with Jarvo to set light foot where no foot seemed ever before to have been set, with Jarvo to inspect every twig and pebble and to take sharp turns where no turn seemed possible, the ascent, perilous as it was, proved to be no such superhuman feat as from below it had appeared.

But it seemed interminable.

Even when the sea lay far beneath them and the faces of the watchers on the deck of _The Aloha_ were no longer distinguishable, the grim wall continued to stretch upward, melting into the sky's late blue.
The afterglow laid a fair path along the water, and the warm dusk came swiftly out of the east.

At snail's pace, now with heads bent to knees, now standing erect to draw themselves up by the arms or to leap a wicked-looking crevice, the four took their way up the black side of the rock.