cries; dark and dreadful might be the woe of those who went down to the
sea in ships, but they shrilled on unheeding, their yellow beaks still
yellowing in the sun, keeping their everlasting watch and ward.

Now and again other birds, dark, quick-winged, low-flying, shot in among
the white companies of sea-gulls, stretching their long necks, and
turning their swift, cowardly eyes here and there, the cruel beak
extended, the body gorged with carrion. Black marauders among blithe
birds of peace and joy, they watched like sable spirits near the nests,
or on some near sea rocks, sombre and alone, blinked evilly at the tall
bright cliffs and the lightsome legions nestling there.

These swart loiterers by the happy nests of the young were like spirits
of fate who might not destroy, who had no power to harm the living, yet
who could not be driven forth: the ever-present death-heads at the feast,
the impressive acolytes by the altars of destiny.

As the Hardi Biaou drew near the lofty, inviolate cliffs, there opened up
sombre clefts and caverns, honeycombing the island at all points of the
compass. She slipped past rugged pinnacles, like buttresses to the
island, here trailed with vines, valanced with shrubs of unnameable
beauty, and yonder shrivelled and bare like the skin of an elephant.

Some rocks, indeed, were like vast animals round which molten granite had
been poured, preserving them eternally. The heads of great dogs, like
the dogs of Ossian, sprang out in profile from the repulsing mainland;
stupendous gargoyles grinned at them from dark points of excoriated
cliff. Farther off, the face of a battered sphinx stared with unheeding
look into the vast sea and sky beyond. From the dark depths of mystic
crypts came groanings, like the roaring of lions penned beside the caves