Another incident connected with that coast lives in my mind. It was
the morning after a great storm--great even for that stormy coast--
and the passion-worn waters were still heaving with the memory of a
fury that was dead. Old Nick had scattered his marbles far and wide,
and there were rents and fissures in the pebbly wall such as the
oldest fisherman had never known before. Some of the hugest stones
lay tossed a hundred yards away, and the waters had dug pits here and
there along the ridge so deep that a tall man might stand in some of
them, and yet his head not reach the level of the sand.

Round one of these holes a small crowd was pressing eagerly, while
one man, standing in the hollow, was lifting the few remaining stones
off something that lay there at the bottom. I pushed my way between
the straggling legs of a big fisher lad, and peered over with the
rest. A ray of sunlight streamed down into the pit, and the thing at
the bottom gleamed white. Sprawling there among the black pebbles it
looked like a huge spider. One by one the last stones were lifted
away, and the thing was left bare, and then the crowd looked at one
another and shivered.

"Wonder how he got there," said a woman at length; "somebody must ha'
helped him."

"Some foreign chap, no doubt," said the man who had lifted off the
stones; "washed ashore and buried here by the sea."

"What, six foot below the water-mark, wi' all they stones atop of
him?" said another.