Page 525 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

and food. First he examined the crevice by which he had
entered. It was shaped like an irregular triangle, hollowed
at the base by the action of the water which in such storms
as that of the preceding night was forced into it by the ris-
ing of the sea. John Rex dared not crawl too near the edge,
lest he should slide out of the damp and slippery orifice, and
be dashed upon the rocks at the bottom of the Blow-hole.
Craning his neck, he could see, a hundred feet below him,
the sullenly frothing water, gurgling, spouting, and cream-
ing, in huge turbid eddies, occasionally leaping upwards as
though it longed for another storm to send it raging up to
the man who had escaped its fury. It was impossible to get
down that way. He turned back into the cavern, and began
to explore in that direction. The twin-rocks against which
he had been hurled were, in fact, pillars which supported
the roof of the water-drive. Beyond them lay a great grey
shadow which was emptiness, faintly illumined by the sea-
light cast up through the bottom of the gulf. Midway across
the grey shadow fell a strange beam of dusky brilliance,
which cast its flickering light upon a wilderness of wav-
ing sea-weeds. Even in the desperate position in which he
found himself, there survived in the vagabond’s nature suf-
ficient poetry to make him value the natural marvel upon
which he had so strangely stumbled. The immense prom-
ontory, which, viewed from the outside, seemed as solid as
a mountain, was in reality but a hollow cone, reft and split
into a thousand fissures by the unsuspected action of the
sea for centuries. The Blow-hole was but an insignificant
cranny compared with this enormous chasm. Descending

For the Term of His Natural Life