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The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo
page 55 of 820 (06%)
offer themselves less as a road than as a fall; they sink rather than
incline. This one--probably some ramification of a road on the plain
above--was disagreeable to look at, so vertical was it. From underneath
you saw it gain by zigzag the higher layer of the cliff where it passed
out through deep passages on to the high plateau by a cutting in the
rock; and the passengers for whom the vessel was waiting in the creek
must have come by this path.

Excepting the movement of embarkation which was being made in the creek,
a movement visibly scared and uneasy, all around was solitude; no step,
no noise, no breath was heard. At the other side of the roads, at the
entrance of Ringstead Bay, you could just perceive a flotilla of
shark-fishing boats, which were evidently out of their reckoning. These
polar boats had been driven from Danish into English waters by the whims
of the sea. Northerly winds play these tricks on fishermen. They had
just taken refuge in the anchorage of Portland--a sign of bad weather
expected and danger out at sea. They were engaged in casting anchor: the
chief boat, placed in front after the old manner of Norwegian flotillas,
all her rigging standing out in black, above the white level of the sea;
and in front might be perceived the hook-iron, loaded with all kinds of
hooks and harpoons, destined for the Greenland shark, the dogfish, and
the spinous shark, as well as the nets to pick up the sunfish.

Except a few other craft, all swept into the same corner, the eye met
nothing living on the vast horizon of Portland--not a house, not a ship.
The coast in those days was not inhabited, and the roads, at that
season, were not safe.

Whatever may have been the appearance of the weather, the beings who
were going to sail away in the Biscayan urca pressed on the hour of
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