Page 529 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

huge sun-blistered boulders, an object which his sailor eye
told him at once was part of the top hamper of some large
ship. Crusted with shells, and its ruin so overrun with the
ivy of the ocean that its ropes could barely be distinguished
from the weeds with which they were encumbered, this
relic of human labour attested the triumph of nature over
human ingenuity. Perforated below by the relentless sea, ex-
posed above to the full fury of the tempest; set in solitary
defiance to the waves, that rolling from the ice-volcano of
the Southern Pole, hurled their gathered might unchecked
upon its iron front, the great rock drew from its lonely war-
fare the materials of its own silent vengeance. Clasped in
iron arms, it held its prey, snatched from the jaws of the all-
devouring sea. One might imagine that, when the doomed
ship, with her crew of shrieking souls, had splintered and
gone down, the deaf, blind giant had clutched this fragment,
upheaved from the seething waters, with a thrill of savage
and terrible joy.
John Rex, gazing up at this memento of a forgotten ag-
ony, felt a sensation of the most vulgar pleasure. ‘There’s
wood for my fire!’ thought he; and mounting to the spot,
he essayed to fling down the splinters of timber upon the
platform. Long exposed to the sun, and flung high above
the water-mark of recent storms, the timber had dried to
the condition of touchwood, and would burn fiercely. It was
precisely what he required. Strange accident that had for
years stored, upon a desolate rock, this fragment of a van-
ished and long-forgotten vessel, that it might aid at last to
warm the limbs of a villain escaping from justice!

For the Term of His Natural Life