But
though they rise not so high above the water, they go down a long way
below it; so that there is fifty fathom right up to the cliff, and many a
good craft out of reckoning in fog, or on a pitch-dark night, has run
full against that frowning wall, and perished, ship and crew, without a
soul to hear their cries. Yet, though the rock looks hard as adamant, the
eternal washing of the wave has worn it out below, and even with the
slightest swell there is a dull and distant booming of the surge in those
cavernous deeps; and when the wind blows fresh, each roller smites the
cliff like a thunder-clap, till even the living rock trembles again.
It was on a ledge of that rock-face that our cave opened, and sometimes
on a fine day Elzevir would carry me out thither, so that I might sun
myself and see all the moving Channel without myself being seen. For this
ledge was carved out something like a balcony, so that when the quarry
was in working they could lower the stone by pulleys to boats lying
underneath, and perhaps haul up a keg or two by the way of ballast, as
might be guessed by the stanchions still rusting in the rock.
Such was this gallery; and as for the inside of the cave, 'twas a great
empty room, with a white floor made up of broken stone-dust trodden hard
of old till one would say it was plaster; and dry, without those sweaty
damps so often seen in such places--save only in one corner a
land-spring dropped from the roof trickling down over spiky
rock-icicles, and falling into a little hollow in the floor.
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