“I’ve been over cliffs worse than those, for gulls eggs,” said he, “take one coast with another, coasts are pretty much the same, you get bad bits and easy bits, that is all.”
La Touche said nothing.
As they drew on the great islands out at sea ranged themselves more definitely and the tremendous coast to starboard shewed more clearly its deep cut canons, its sea arches and absolute desolation.
The sea had fallen, though the wind still held steady, and this surface calmness, under-run by a gentle swell, served only to emphasize the vastness of the view. The island seemed immensely remote and immense in size, the far snow-covered mountains the mountains of a land where giants had lived and from which they had departed countless ages ago.
Oyster catches passed the boat with their melancholy cry, but the fishing gannets and the swimming puffins seemed scarcely to heed the intruders. Puffins swimming a biscuit toss away as though they had never learned the fear of man.
They had drawn nearer shore so that the boom of the swell in the caves and on the rocks came to them with the crying of the shore birds; passing a headland like a vast lizard they opened a beach curved like the new moon and seven miles from horn to horn.
“There’s our landing-place,” cried Bompard, “big enough to pick and choose from.”
“Lord!” shouted La Touche. “Look over there—moving rocks!”
He pointed half a mile away to seaward.
Bompard looked.