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Rh among the trees; but it might have been the gnarled trunks shifting and interweaving with the patches of sky that showed through. And the next instant he was busy with the tiller-ropes. The boat tossed laboriously, dragging as if uphill, round the foot of the lofty broken columns of basalt, where the waves tumbled with a heavy and hollow noise as of caves.

"They's no landin' that side now, ye see," grunted the Yankee. And even as he spoke, they rounded a point of lifting seaweed, and ran into the cool shadows of the eastward cliffs. Here, though the tide was still against them, they rowed more easily, in almost a calm. Under the astounding lee of the cliffs there fell a kind of instant twilight, a melancholy evening stillness and dusk, so that Archer, turning his eyes from this dark precipice that overawed their cockleshell boat, was surprised to find the wide ocean still aglow, and the tiny sail that nicked the horizon still white in the sun. This island was a sombre place, thought Archer, for an adventure planned so boyishly.