layed its glossy back and vast
angular fin--even the pigeons, as they shot whizzing by, one moment
scarce visible in the gloom, the next radiant in the light--all acquired
a new interest, from the peculiarity of the _setting_ in which we saw
them. They formed a series of sun-gilt vignettes, framed in jet; and it
was long ere we tired of seeing and admiring in them much of the strange
and the beautiful. It did seem rather ominous, however, and perhaps
somewhat supernatural to boot, that about an hour after noon, the tide,
while there was yet a full fathom of water beneath the brow of the
promontory, ceased to fall, and then, after A quarter of an hour's
space, began actually to creep upwards on the beach. But just hoping
that there might be some mistake in the matter, which the evening tide
would scarce fail to rectify, we continued to amuse ourselves, and to
hope on. Hour after hour passed, lengthening as the shadows lengthened,
and yet the tide still rose. The sun had sunk behind the precipices, and
all was gloom along their bases, and double gloom in their caves; but
their rugged brows still caught the red glare of evening. The flush rose
higher and higher, chased by the shadows; and then, after lingering for
a moment on their crests of honeysuckle and juniper, passed away, and
the whole became sombre and grey. The sea-gull sprang upwards from where
he had floated on the ripple, and hied him slowly away to his lodge in
his deep-sea stack; the dusky cormorant flitted past, with heavier and
more frequent stroke, to his whitened shelf high on the precipice; the
pigeons came whizzing downwards from the uplands and the opposite land,
and disappeared amid the gloom of their caves; every creature that had
wings made use of them in speeding homewards; but neither my companion
nor myself had any; and there was no possibility of getting home without
them. We made desperate efforts to scale the precipices, and on two
several occasions succeeded in reaching mid-way shelves among the crags,
where the sparrowhawk and the raven build; but though we had climbed
well enough to render our return a matter of bare possibility, there was
no possibility whatever of getting farther up: the cliffs had never been
scaled before, and they were not destined to be scaled now. And so, as
the twilight deepened, and the precarious footing became every moment
more doubtful and precarious still, we had just to give up in despair.
"Wouldn't care for myse