ing of the creek seaward, a
narrow passage, traced on the almost night-black interior a pallid rift
where the waves were moving. You must have been quite close to perceive
the hooker moored to the rocks, and, as it were, hidden by the great
cloaks of shadow. A plank thrown from on board on to a low and level
projection of the cliff, the only point on which a landing could be
made, placed the vessel in communication with the land. Dark figures
were crossing and recrossing each other on this tottering gangway, and
in the shadow some people were embarking.

It was less cold in the creek than out at sea, thanks to the screen of
rock rising over the north of the basin, which did not, however, prevent
the people from shivering. They were hurrying. The effect of the
twilight defined the forms as though they had been punched out with a
tool. Certain indentations in their clothes were visible, and showed
that they belonged to the class called in England the ragged.

The twisting of the pathway could be distinguished vaguely in the relief
of the cliff. A girl who lets her stay-lace hang down trailing over the
back of an armchair, describes, without being conscious of it, most of
the paths of cliffs and mountains. The pathway of this creek, full of
knots and angles, almost perpendicular, and better adapted for goats
than men, terminated on the platform where the plank was placed. The
pathways of cliffs ordinarily imply a not very inviting declivity; they
offer themselves less as a road than as a fall; they sink rather than
incline. This one--probably some ramification of a road on the plain
above--was disagreeable to look at, so vertical was it. From underneath
you saw it gain by zigzag the higher layer of the cliff where it passed
out through deep passages on to the high plateau by a cutting in the
rock; and the passengers for whom the vessel was waiting in the creek
must have come by this path.

Excepting the movement of embarkation which was being made in the creek,
a movement visibly scared and uneasy, all around was solitude; no step,
no noise, no breath was heard. At the other side of the roads, at the
entrance of Ringstead Bay, you could just perceive a flotilla of
shark-fishing boats, which were evidently out of their reckoning. These
polar boats had been driven from Danish into English waters by the whims
of the sea. Northerly winds play these tricks on fishermen. They had
just taken refuge in the anchorage of Portland-