A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex by Charles W. (Charles Watts) Whistler
page 133 of 401 (33%)
page 133 of 401 (33%)
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place that I knew nothing of, and I had yet to learn if there was
any hope from Evan's shore going, which might make things easier or might not. I could hear no one moving about the ship, so I pushed the door open for an inch or two, and looked out into the moonlight, with my drawn sword ready in my hand. We were in a strange place. The ship's bows were landward, so that as I looked aft I could see that we lay just inside the mouth of a little cove, whose guarding cliffs towered on either side of the water for not less than ten-score feet above the fringe of breakers, falling sheer to the water with hardly so much as a jutting rock at their feet. There was no sign of house or man at the hilltop, so that it was plain that we were not at Tenby. Then I was able to see that we were alongside a sort of landing place that was partly natural and partly hewn and smoothed from the living rock into a sort of wharf at the foot of the cliff. From this landing place a steep road, hewn with untold labour at some ancient day, slanted sharply upward and toward the head of the cove along the face of the rocks, which were somewhat less steep on this side than across the water. I could not see the top of this road, but no doubt it was that along which Thorgils and the princess had gone, and no doubt also Evan thought to carry me up it before long. I had a hope that my friend would return too soon for that, but it was a slender one. It was plain that he had gone too far for me to call to him. Yet could I win clear of the ship I might find or fight my way up after him, and that seemed easy with only these three Welshmen against me, and they expecting no attack. |
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