edged with the fire of the growing light behind it, and then I started,
as well I might, for I perceived that the top of the peak, which was
about eighty feet high by one hundred and fifty feet thick at its base,
was shaped like a negro's head and face, whereon was stamped a most
fiendish and terrifying expression. There was no doubt about it; there
were the thick lips, the fat cheeks, and the squat nose standing out
with startling clearness against the flaming background. There, too, was
the round skull, washed into shape perhaps by thousands of years of
wind and weather, and, to complete the resemblance, there was a scrubby
growth of weeds or lichen upon it, which against the sun looked for all
the world like the wool on a colossal negro's head. It certainly was
very odd; so odd that now I believe it is not a mere freak of nature but
a gigantic monument fashioned, like the well-known Egyptian Sphinx, by a
forgotten people out of a pile of rock that lent itself to their
design, perhaps as an emblem of warning and defiance to any enemies who
approached the harbour. Unfortunately we were never able to ascertain
whether or not this was the case, inasmuch as the rock was difficult of
access both from the land and the waterside, and we had other things
to attend to. Myself, considering the matter by the light of what we
afterwards saw, I believe that it was fashioned by man, but whether or
not this is so, there it stands, and sullenly stares from age to age out
across the changing sea--there it stood two thousand years and more
ago, when Amenartas, the Egyptian princess, and the wife of Leo's remote
ancestor Kallikrates, gazed upon its devilish face--and there I have no
doubt it will still stand when as many centuries as are numbered between
her day and our own are added to the year that bore us to oblivion.

"What do you think of that, Job?" I asked of our retainer, who was
sitting on the edge of the boat, trying to get as much sunshine as
possible, and generally looking uncommonly wretched, and I pointed to