"We'd ought ter be gettin' handy," roared the latter to Frenchy, who nodded back, turning towards us his dripping, bearded face, for an instant.
Suddenly he extended his arm.
"Me see. To port!" he shouted.
Dimly, veiled by the fog curtain, of ghostly outline, a jutting cliff appeared and Sammy luffed slightly. On both sides of us the seas were dashing up some tremendous rocks, but directly ahead there was an opening between the combers that hurled themselves aloft, roaring and impotent, to fall back into seething masses of spume. There was a suggestion of tremendous walls over which voices were shrieking in the battle of unending centuries between the moving turmoil and the stolid cliffs, defying the battering waves.
Our little boat flew on, and suddenly the rolling and pitching ceased as if some magic had oiled the waters. Within the land-locked cove the wind no longer howled and the surface was smooth. It was like awaking from the unrest of a nightmare to the peace of one's bed. We glided on, losing headway, for Frenchy had let the sheets run. With movements apparently slow, yet with the deftness which brings quick results, the sails were gathered about the masts and made fast, and presently we drifted against the small forest of poles supporting the flakes and fishhouses. These were black and glistening with the rain and from them came an odor, acrid and penetrating, of decaying fish in ill-emptied gurry-butts and of putrefying livers oozing out a black oil in open casks.
We made our way over the precarious footing of unstable planks and shook ourselves like wet dogs, while Sammy stopped for a moment to hunt beneath his oilskins for a sodden plug of tobacco, from which he managed to gnaw off a satisfactory portion.
"Well, we's here, anyways," he observed, quietly.
"Sammy, you're a wonderful man!" I exclaimed, earnestly.
The old fellow looked at me, but his seamed face appeared devoid of understanding. Slowly there seemed to dawn upon his mind the idea that this might be some sort of jest on my part, and the tanned leather of his countenance wrinkled further into a near approach to a smile, as we started up the steep path leading up to the village.
Yet I had meant no pleasantry whatever, for really I was awed by the mystery of it all. In the fog that rolled in with the north-east gale we had left Will's Island, ten miles away, and skirted, without ever seeing them, some miles of cliffs. We had avoided scores of rocks over which the seas broke fiercely, and had finally dashed through a narrow opening in the appalling face of the huge ledge, unerringly. To me it seemed like a gigantic deed, beyond the powers of man.