II
"Ee see," said the old gentleman, as soon as they had pulled out past Castle Cornet, and had hoisted the masts and two rather dirty sprit sails, and had run out the bowsprit and a new clean jib with a view to putting the best possible face on matters, and were beginning to catch occasional puffs of a soft westerly breeze and to wallow slowly along,—"Ee see, time's o' consekens to me and my son. We got to arn our livin'. An' Havver Gosslin's this side the island an' th' Creux's t'other side, an' th' currents round them points is the very divvle."
"That's all right, as long as you land me in Sark."
"The very divvle," and the grizzled head wagged reminiscently. "I seen 'em go right up to Casquets and haf-way to Jarsey trying to get across to Sark. An' when time's o' consekens an' you got to arn your livin', you don' want to be playin' 'bout Casquets an' Jarsey 'stid of gittin' 'cross to Sark an' done wi' it."
"Not a bit of it. You're quite right. Try some of this,"—as he began fumbling meaningly with a black stump of a pipe.
He filled up, and passed on the pouch to his son, who was lying on the thwarts forward, and he also filled up and passed it back with a nod.
"What's this?" asked Graeme.
"Jetto. Mr. Lee—Sir Austin 'e is now—brother o' Passon Lee o' the Port," with a backward jerk of the head, "'e rents it."
"Live there?"
"Naw—rabbits."
"And the bigger island yonder?"
"'At's Harm. 'T's a Garman man has that—Prince Bloocher, they calls him. Keeps kangyroos there an' orstrichers an' things. Don't let annybody ashore there now 'cept just to Shell Beach, which he can't help."
They struck straight across to the long high-ridged island in front, and Graeme's untutored eyes found no special beauty in it.
There was about it, however, a vague gray aloofness which chimed with his spirit, a sober austerity as of a stricken whale,—a mother-whale surely, for was not her young one there at her nose,—fled here to heal her wound perchance, and desirous only of solitude.
But, as they drew nearer, the vague blue-gray bloom of the whaleback resolved itself into a mantle of velvet green, which ran down every rib and spine until it broke off sharp at varying heights and let the bare bones through; and all below the break was clean naked rock—black, cream-yellow, gray, red, brown,—with everywhere a tawny fringe of seaweed, since the tide was at its lowest. Below the fringe the rocks were scoured almost white, and whiter still at their feet, like a tangled drapery of ragged lace, was the foam of the long slow seas.
And the solid silhouette of the island broke suddenly into bosky valleys soft with trees and bracken, and cliff-ringed bays, with wide-spread arms of tumbled rock whose outer ends were tiny islets and hungry reefs.
"Brecqhou," said the ancient mariner, as they swung past a long green island with beetling cliffs, and yawning caverns, and comet-like rushes of white foam among the chaos of rocks below.
Then they swirled through a tumbling race, where the waters came up writhing and boiling from strife with hidden rocks below,—past the dark chasm between Brecqhou and the mainland of Sark, through which the race roared with the voice of many waters—and so into a quiet haven where hard-worked boats lay resting from their labours.
There was a beach of tumbled rocks and seaweed at the head of the bay, and there the grim cliffs fell back into a steep green gully which suggested possibility of ascent. But instead of running in there, the sails were furled and the boat nosed slowly towards the overhanging side of the cliff, where a broad iron ladder fell precariously into the water with its top projecting out beyond its base, so that to climb it one had to lie on one's back, so to speak.
HAVRE GOSSELIN LADDERS
The ancient one eyed his passenger whimsically as the boat stole up to the rungs, so Graeme permitted himself no more than a careless glance at the forbidding ladder and asked, "How about the baggage?"
"We'll see to et," grinned the ancient, and stood, hands on hips and face twisted into a grim smile, while the stranger laid hold of the rusty iron and started upwards, with no slightest idea where the end of the venture might land him.
With the after-assistance of a neighbour of somewhat more genial construction,—inasmuch as it at all events stood upright, and did not lean over the opposite way of ladders in general,—the top rung landed him on a little platform, whence a rope and some foot-holes in the rock, and finally a zigzag path, invited further ascent still.
The portmanteaux were hauled up by a rope and shouldered by his guardian angels, and they toiled slowly up the steep.
Each step developed new beauties behind and on either side. At the top he would fain have rested to drink it all in, but his guides went stolidly on,—towards drink of a more palpable description, he doubted not; and he remembered that time was of consekens, and tore himself away from that most wonderful view and panted after them.
The zigzag path led round clumps of flaming gorse to a gap in a rough stone wall, and so to a tall granite pillar which crowned the cliff and commemorated a disaster. It was erected, he saw, to the memory of a Mr. Jeremiah Pilcher who had been drowned just below in attempting the passage to Guernsey. He had but one regret at the moment—that it was not instead to the memory of Mr. Jeremiah Pixley.