"Might have been worse.
Quite bad enough, though.

Shakes one so.

Now for a rest, and then down again." He stepped to the edge and looked over in the middle, next to the left, then to the right, and always with the same result.

He was now on a regular sea-birds' sanctuary, for the rock below him was not perpendicular; but sloped right under, and, try as he would, he could devise no plan for getting down lower, save by taking a header into the sea, where the water looked black and deep to his right, while to his left there was the chasm upon which, twenty feet or so out of the perpendicular line, was the hole from which he had come.
Heights of sea-cliffs are very deceptive, and slopes which look to the inexperienced eye only a hundred feet or so to the top, are often more than double.

It was so here, for, in spite of the distance he had come down, the midshipman found that he must be fully two hundred feet above the sea.
"Oh, how vexatious!" he cried, as he ground his teeth.