“Then there are congers here?”
“Ay, big uns, too; but the bottom’s all covered with rocks, and there’s holes all along for the eels to run in, and when you hook ’em they twist in, and you only lose your line.”
He gave the boat a vigorous shove, and it glided out into the light once more, a hundred yards from the cliff, but with the rugged pyramid of granite through which they had passed towering up behind them, and its many shelves dotted with sea-birds lazily sunning themselves and stretching out their wings to dry.
A few flew up, uttering peculiar cries, as the boat darted out of the dark arch beneath them; but, for the most part, they merely looked down and took no further notice—the boat and its little crew being too familiar an object to excite their fear, especially as its occupants did not land, and the egg-time was at an end.
“Now, then, up with the mast, lads!” said the old man; and cleverly enough the boys stepped the little spar by thrusting its end through a hole in the forward thwart and down into a socket fixed in the inner part of the keel. Then the stays were hooked on, hauled taut, and up went the little lug-sail smartly enough, the patch of brown tanned canvas filling at once, and sending the boat gliding gently along over the rocks which showed clearly deep down through the crystal sea.
“Soon know how to manage a boat yourselves,” said the old man grimly, as he thrust an oar over the stern and used it to steer.
“Manage a boat ourselves!” cried Mike. “I should think we could—eh, Vince?”
“Should think you could!” said the old man laughing. “Ah! you think you could, but you can’t. Why, I hardly know how yet, after trying for fifty year. Wants some larning, boys, when tide’s low, and the rocks are bobbing up and down ready to make holes in the bottom. Don’t you two be too sure, and don’t you never go along here far without me.”
The boys said nothing; but they felt the truth of the man’s words as he steered them in and out among the jagged masses of granite, around which the glassy currents glided, now covering them from sight, now leaving bare their weed-hung, broken-out fangs; while on their left, as they steered north toward a huge projection, which ran right out on the far side of a little bay, the perpendicular cliffs rose up grey and grand, defended by buttresses formed by masses that had fallen, and pierced every here and there by caverns, into which the water ran and rushed with strange, hollow, whispering noises and slaps and gurglings, as if there were peculiar creatures far up in the darkness resenting being disturbed.
Every now and then the sea, as it heaved and sank, laid bare some rounded mass covered with long, hanging sea-weed, which parted on the top and hung down on either side, giving the stone the appearance of some strange, long-haired sea monster, which had just thrust its head above the surface to gaze at the boat, and once this was so near that Mike shrank from it as it peered over the thwart, the boat almost grating against the side.