Another angle of the zigzag rift was passed, and then the rugged stony flooring gave place to dark, deep water, beautifully transparent—so clear that the many-tinted fronds of bladder-wrack and other weeds could be seen swaying to and fro under the influence of the tide which rose and fell.
Here, in a natural harbour, sheltered from all dangers, lay the boat the boy sought. It was moored in a nook by a rope attached to a great ring; the staple had been sunk in a crack and sealed fast with molten lead, and no matter what storms raged outside, the boat was safely sheltered, and swung in a natural basin at ordinary tides, while at the very lowest it grounded gently in a bed of white sand.
It was well afloat upon this occasion, and skirting round it along a laboriously chipped-out ledge about a foot wide, the boy entered a crack in the rock face, for it could hardly be called a cavern. But it was big enough for its purpose, which was to shelter from the rain and rock drippings a quantity of boat gear, mast, sails, ropes, and tackle generally, which leaned or hung snugly enough about the rock, in company with a small seine, a trammel-net, a spare grapnel or two, some lobster-pots, and buoys with corks and lines.
Aleck was not long about carrying mast, yard, and sail to the boat and shipping them. Then, in obedience to an idea, he placed a couple of fishing-lines, a gaff-hook, a landing-net, and some spare hooks aboard; then, taking a little bucket, he half filled it with the crystal water of the pool, and after placing it aboard took hold of a thin line, one end of which was secured to a ring-bolt in a block of wreck lumber, while the other ran down into the pool.
A pull at the line brought a large closely-worked, spindle-shaped basket to the surface, when a commotion inside announced that the six-inch-wide square of flat cork, which formed a lid, covered something alive.
So it proved; for upon unfastening the lid an opening was laid bare, and upon the “coorge”—as the fishing folk called the basket—being laid across the bucket and turned sidewise, some ten or a dozen silvery eel-shaped fish glided out into the bucket, and began swimming round and round in search of an outlet.
“More bait than I shall want,” said Aleck, covering and letting the basket go back into the pool. Then, unfastening the mooring-rope, the boy picked up a boat-hook, and by hooking on to the side rocks here and there he piloted the boat along the devious watery lane, with the mighty walls towering high on either side and whispering or echoing back every sound he produced on his way out to the open sea.
It was beautiful—solemn—grand—all in one, that narrow, gloomy, zigzag way between the perpendicular walls; and a naturalist would have spent hours examining the many-tinted sea anemones that opened their rays and awl-shaped tentacles below the water, or lay adhering and quiescent upon the rocks where the tide had fallen, looking some green, some olive, and many more like bosses of gelatinous coagulated blood.
But these were too common objects of the seashore for Aleck Donne to heed; his eyes were for the most part upon the blue and opalescent picture some two hundred yards before him, where the chasm ended, its sharp edges looking black against the sea and sky as he hooked on here, gave a thrust there, and sent the boat along till the rift grew lighter and lighter, and then was left behind, for a final thrust had sent the boat right out into the sunshine, and in full view of three huge skittle-shaped rocks standing up out of the sea, high as the wall-like cliff of which at some time or another they must have been a portion. They were now many yards away and formed the almost secure nesting-places of hundreds upon hundreds of birds, whose necks stood up like so many pegs against the sky, giving the rocks a peculiar bristling appearance. But the sense of security for the young birds was upset by the long flapping wings of a couple of great black-backed gulls which kept on sailing round and round, waiting till the opportunity came to make a hawk-like swoop and carry off some well-fatted, half-feathered young auk. One met its fate, in the midst of a rippling purring cry, just as Aleck laid in his boat-hook and proceeded to step the mast, swaying easily the while with the boat, which was now well afloat on the rising and falling sea.