Fortunately for Ralph Darley, he was quite at home in the water, and the strong firm strokes he took were sufficient to carry him well in toward the side, so that he passed the little whirlpool where its force was weakest; and as the men below closed together, and waded a couple of steps to meet him, they had the mortification of seeing him clinging to the wall of rock, half-a-dozen yards above them, and then creeping forward again, step by step, till he reached the point from which he had been swept, and held on there once more.
Here, as they watched him curiously, they saw that he remained motionless, as if thinking what to do next, as was the case; and coming to the conclusion that he must manage somehow to grasp that tuft of ivy, he tried again, with the dread of the consequences the less from the experience he had gone through.
Coming to the conclusion that the only way was to raise himself upon his toes at the last moment, and jerk himself forward, he drew in a deep breath, reached out to the utmost, but raised his left hand more, then loosened his grasp with his right, and when he thought the moment had come, gave a slight bound.
That did it.

He caught at the ivy, his fingers closed upon it tightly, and he tried hard to keep his feet upon the ledge below water.

But this effort failed, his balance was gone, his feet glided from the ledge, and he swung round, holding on to the ivy, which seemed to be giving way at its roots.
But as Ralph fell, his hand slipped quite a foot down the ivy, and the water took a good deal of his weight, so that, though the strain upon the feeble growth was great, it remained firm enough to hold him; and he hung half in, half out of the water for some time, afraid to stir, but all the time energetically using his eyes, to seek for a way out of his perilous position.
He was not long in coming to a decision.

Above the ivy there was one of the cracks, and he saw that if he could reach that, he could climb to the one above, and from there gain the roots of a gnarled hawthorn, whose seed had been dropped in a fissure by a bird generations back, the dryness of the position and want of root-food keeping the tree stunted and dwarfed.

Once up there, another ten or twelve feet would take him to the top of the lower wall, and then he felt that it would go hard if he could not climb and hide, or escape up the cliff; so he set to at once to try..