ly of solitude.

But, as they drew nearer, the vague blue-gray bloom of the whaleback
resolved itself into a mantle of velvet green, which ran down every
rib and spine until it broke off sharp at varying heights and let the
bare bones through; and all below the break was clean naked
rock--black, cream-yellow, gray, red, brown,--with everywhere a tawny
fringe of seaweed, since the tide was at its lowest. Below the fringe
the rocks were scoured almost white, and whiter still at their feet,
like a tangled drapery of ragged lace, was the foam of the long slow
seas.

And the solid silhouette of the island broke suddenly into bosky
valleys soft with trees and bracken, and cliff-ringed bays, with
wide-spread arms of tumbled rock whose outer ends were tiny islets and
hungry reefs.

"Brecqhou," said the ancient mariner, as they swung past a long green
island with beetling cliffs, and yawning caverns, and comet-like
rushes of white foam among the chaos of rocks below.

Then they swirled through a tumbling race, where the waters came up
writhing and boiling from strife with hidden rocks below,--past the
dark chasm between Brecqhou and the mainland of Sark, through which
the race roared with the voice of many waters--and so into a quiet
haven where hard-worked boats lay resting from their labours.

There was a beach of tumbled rocks and seaweed at the head of the bay,
and there the grim cliffs fell back into a steep green gully which
suggested possibility of ascent. But instead of running in there, the
sails were furled and the boat nosed slowly towards the overhanging
side of the cliff, where a broad iron ladder fell precariously into
the water with its top projecting out beyond its base, so that to
climb it one had to lie on one's back, so to speak.

The ancient one eyed his passenger whimsically as the boat stole up to
the rungs, so Graeme permitted himself no more than a careless glance
at the forbidding ladder and asked, "How about the baggage?"

"We'll see to et," grinned the ancient, and stood, hands on hips and
face twisted into a grim smile, while the stranger laid hold of the
rusty iron and started upwards, with no slightest idea where the end
of the venture might land him.

With the after-assistance of a neighbour of somewhat more genial
construction,--inasmuch as it at all events stood upright, and did not
lean over the opposite way of ladders in general,--the top rung landed
him on a little platform, whence a