arm, and see if I do not let blood
from thy coxcomb. Catch him, Will, and bring him me here!"

The surgeon vanished as the blind giant made a step forward; and they
set forth, Amyas walking slowly, but firmly, between his two friends.

"Whither?" asked Cary.

"To the south end. The crag above the Devil's-limekiln. No other place
will suit."

Jack gave a murmur, and half-stopped, as a frightful suspicion crossed
him.

"That is a dangerous place!"

"What of that?" said Amyas, who caught his meaning in his tone. "Dost
think I am going to leap over cliff? I have not heart enough for that.
On, lads, and set me safe among the rocks."

So slowly, and painfully, they went on, while Amyas murmured to himself:

"No, no other place will suit; I can see all thence."

So on they went to the point, where the cyclopean wall of granite cliff
which forms the western side of Lundy, ends sheer in a precipice of some
three hundred feet, topped by a pile of snow-white rock, bespangled with
golden lichens. As they approached, a raven, who sat upon the topmost
stone, black against the bright blue sky, flapped lazily away, and sank
down the abysses of the cliff, as if he scented the corpses underneath
the surge. Below them from the Gull-rock rose a thousand birds, and
filled the air with sound; the choughs cackled, the hacklets wailed,
the great blackbacks laughed querulous defiance at the intruders, and a
single falcon, with an angry bark, dashed out from beneath their feet,
and hung poised high aloft, watching the sea-fowl which swung slowly
round and round below.

It was a glorious sight upon a glorious day. To the northward the glens
rushed down toward the cliff, crowned with gray crags, and carpeted with
purple heather and green fern; and from their feet stretched away to
the westward the sapphire rollers of the vast Atlantic, crowned with a
thousand crests of flying foam. On their left hand, some ten miles to
the south, stood out against the sky the purple wall of Hartland cliffs,
sinking lower and lower as they trended away to the southward along the
lonely ironbound shores of Cornwall, until they faded, dim and blue,
into the blue horizon forty miles away.

The sky was flecked with clouds, which rushed toward them fast upon the
roaring south-west wind; and the warm ocean-breeze swept up the cliffs,
and whistled through the heather-bells, and howled in cranny and in
crag,

"Till the pillars and clefts of the granite