54 On Climbing in General 
chucking out ballast”! To this day I have never been able to 
make up my mind whether it was the hot sun, the giddy 
height or the heavy luncheon which had so alarming an effect 
on him. 
He was soon in commission again and resumed his station 
and we went on. At places it became necessary to change from 
one terrace to another, perhaps 20 to 25 ft. below. This we 
effected by means of our rope, the last man coming down on 
the two parts of the rope hitched around some crag or palmetto 
bush, after which we overhauled it and proceeded on our way. 
It was very exciting work especially when it became a moral 
certainty that by no possible means could we retrace our steps! 
Eventually we reached the terrace above the Monkeys’ Cave, 
near the Governor's Cottage, whence we soon made our escape 
and were once again treading the habitable portion of the Rock. 
Like all such adventures, the excitement and fun were due to 
the delightful possibilities of our getting into an impossible place, 
but fortune favoured us. 
Another totally distinct class of climbing at this time was the 
exploration of some of the immense limestone caverns with which 
the Rock is in places honeycombed. This afforded great scope 
for rope-work and climbing. The first we tackled was the famous 
St. Michael’s Cave, which according to tradition communicated 
with Africa below the Straits and formed the ‘“ Channel Tunnel” 
for the ‘Rock monkeys” (Barbary apes). My companion in 
this was Lieutenant Alfred Carpenter, R.N. (now Captain retired). 
With the aid of some Bluejackets armed with ropes and a good 
supply of boat’s lead-lines we reached the bottom or rather 
bottoms of the cave coming to pools of clear fresh water in 
every case. The last 200 ft. of the descent was down a chimney- 
like fissure in the limestone. At one point this narrowed so 
much that only the smallest of the party could get down it. 
