e
along on the lookout. There's no coast but hasn't some landing-place
where a boat can push in. Y'see it's not like a ship. A boat can go
where a ship can't."

He shifted the helm a bit, keeping the coast parallel to them on the
starboard side.

"Might those islands be better to go to?" asked she, "they couldn't be
worse than that."

La Touche suddenly grew excited. "Bon Dieu," cried he, "what a thing to
be saying! Those islands, nothing but rocks--nothing but rocks. Here
there is land, at all events, good land one can put one's foot on; out
there there's nothing but rocks. Rather than go out there I would swim
ashore--I would--"

"Oh, close up," said Bompard, "don't talk about swimming--maybe you'll
have to."

"One can always drown," said La Touche.

It was Bompard who next broke the silence.

"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.

"Those crest rocks, they're whales," said he.

A pair of whales shewed, standing up, coupling in the chill blue grey
water, a miraculous sight, as though they had entered a world where the