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It seemed to him, also, that the gullet of weed-clad rock through which he was crawling doubled upon itself, and led only into the bowels of the mountain. Gnawed by hunger, and conscious that in a few hours at most the rising tide would fill the subterranean passage and cut off his retreat, he pushed desperately onwards.

He saw neither the cheery cottages on the side streets, with their black walls, and white bows and red pelargoniums behind the shining window-panes, nor the many pretty gardens and avenues, nor the beauty in the weed-clad ruins. His eyes were so filled with the preceding glory, that he could not see anything good in the present.

It was a curious place, Eustace thought, rather dreary than beautiful. On either side rose black cliffs, towering sheer into the air, and shutting out overhead all but a narrow cleft of murky sky. Around, the sea dashed itself in angry white foam against broken stacks and tiny weed-clad skerries.

The sun shone on its brown weed-clad sides, glistened on black clusters of mussels, glowed on the red seams of the rock where the iron cropped out, and baked the black basalt of the upper surface. The spirits of the party revived when they landed. Una's gaiety returned to her. "Have you forgotten the bait, Maurice? I'm sure you have. It would be like you to come for a day's fishing without bait."

Beyond lay the wide sweep of the blue Pacific, whose gentle undulations scarce seemed to have strength enough to rise and lave the weed-clad face of the barrier reef which, for thirty miles, stretched east and west in an unbroken, sweeping curve.

And so as he and Denison sat aft on the skylight drinking their afternoon coffee and smoking their Manilas, and the brown-skinned native crew sat below in the dark and stuffy foc's'le and gambled for tobacco, the Indiana foamed and splashed and rolled before the gale till she ran under the lee of the land into a sea of transparent green, whose gentle rollers scarce broke in foam as they poured over the weed-clad ledges of the barrier-reef into the placid waters or the islet-studded lagoon encompassing the mainland about the village of Sa Lotopa.