along; but now, when
they went out on to the high table-land of rock, it seemed to be blowing
half a gale across the sea. The sunlight sparkled on the glass of the
lighthouse, and the great yellow shaft of stone stretched away upward
into a perfect blue. As clear a blue lay far beneath them when the sea
came rushing in among the lofty crags and sharp pinnacles of rock,
bursting into foam at their feet, and sending long jets of white spray
up into the air. In front of the great wall of rock the sea-birds
wheeled and screamed, and on the points of some of the islands stood
several scarts, motionless figures of jet black on the soft brown and
green of the rock. And what was this island they looked down upon from
over one of the bays? Surely a mighty reproduction by Nature herself of
the Sphynx of the Egyptian plains. Could anything have been more
striking and unexpected and impressive than the sudden discovery of this
great mass of rock resting in the wild sea, its hooded head turned away
toward the north and hidden from the spectator on land, its gigantic
bulk surrounded by a foam of breakers? Lavender, with his teeth set hard
against the wind, must needs take down the outlines of this strange
scene upon paper, while Sheila crouched at her father's side for
shelter, and Ingram was chiefly engaged in holding on to his cap.

"It blows here a bit," said Lavender amid the roar of the waves. "I
suppose in the winter-time the sea will sometimes break across this
place?"

"Ay, and over the top of the lighthouse too," said Mackenzie with a
laugh, as though he was rather proud of the way his native seas behaved.

"Sheila," said Ingram, "I never saw _you_ take refuge from the wind
before."

"It is because we will be standing still," said the girl with a smile
which was scarcely visible, because she had half hidden her face in her
father's great gray beard. "But when Mr. Lavender is finished we will go
down to the great hole in the rocks that you will have seen before, and
perhaps he will make a picture of that too."

"You don't mean to say you would go down there, Sheila?" said Ingram,
"and in this wind?"

"I have been down many times before."

"Indeed, you will do nothing of the kind, Sheila," said her father: "you
will go back to the lighthouse if you like--yes, you may do that--and I
will go down the rocks with Mr. Lavender; but it iss not for a young
lady to go about among the rocks, like a fisherman's lad that wants th