these rocks are bare, so that a man may walk or wade to their extremity,
but when the flood is full only one or two of the very largest can from
time to time be seen projecting their weed-wreathed heads through the
wash of the shore-bound waves. In certain sets of the wind and tide this
is a terrible and most dangerous spot in rough weather, as more than
one vessel have learnt to their cost. So long ago as 1780 a three-decker
man-of-war went ashore there in a furious winter gale, and, with one
exception, every living soul on board of her, to the number of seven
hundred, was drowned. The one exception was a man in irons, who came
safely and serenely ashore seated upon a piece of wreckage. Nobody ever
knew how the shipwreck happened, least of all the survivor in irons, but
the tradition of the terror of the scene yet lives in the district, and
the spot where the bones of the drowned men still peep grimly through
the sand is not unnaturally supposed to be haunted. Ever since this
catastrophe a large bell (it was originally the bell of the ill-fated
vessel itself, and still bears her name, "H.M.S. Thunder," stamped upon
its metal) has been fixed upon the highest rock, and in times of storm
and at high tide sends its solemn note of warning booming across the
deep.

But the bell was quiet now, and just beneath it, in the shadow of the
rock whereon it was placed, a man half hidden in seaweed, with which he
appeared to have purposely covered himself, was seated upon a piece of
wreck. In appearance he was a very fine man, big-shouldered and broad
limbed, and his age might have been thirty-five or a little more. Of his
frame, however, what between the mist and the unpleasantly damp seaweed
with which he was wreathed, not much was to be seen. But such light as
there was fell upon his face as he peered eagerly over and round the
rock, and glinted down the barrels of the double ten-bore gun which he
held across his knee. It was a striking countenance, with its brownish