Page:The Great Secret.djvu/119

ON THE STERILE CLIFFS. Dr Fernandez, with a preliminary shrug of his lean shoulders, and a shiver over his thin body, was the first to recover the use of his reasoning faculties and begin the examination of his surroundings.

He stepped to the outer edge of the shelf, and, folding his arms, looked towards the sea with a sombre expression in his jetty eyes.

Long breakers were rolling round him and dashing themselves almost as furiously as they had done the night before against the cliffs. He saw that devil's blow-hole under his feet, with its upward long jets of foam, and shuddered again as he thought of its possibilities of destruction; but the corpses had long since been knocked to pieces and washed away, therefore he did not see them.

The snow had ceased to fall, but the sky was heavy and clouded. It was daylight, but cold and uniform in its dullness and density. The sea reflected the sky in deeper tones of slate colour, a monotony of chilly grey, broken up only by the dark sides of the advancing rollers and the white surf on their ridges. Of the wreck there appeared no traces.

He noted the cliffs with their heavy edges of snow, in all their serrated roughnesses and fissures, with a more hopeful glance, for it seemed possible for an active Alpine climber, as he had been, to climb them. The rope, also dangling idly over the ledge and leading to the surf, below would be of great use.

After a long pause at the entrance he turned to examine the cave. Where it lead to, it was yet impossible to say, and dangerous to explore without lights, and these they had not. It was of vast dimensions at the entrance, and reached far into the rocks, for the roaring of the surf below re-echoed rumblingly in its