14 THE FATTED CALF. 



" The cap'ns gave us youngsters leave to ramble 

 about for an hour, so we thought we'd cross the 

 island, get down to the shore on the other side, 

 and follow the beach back to the boat. We had 

 high hopes of finding a seal, for neither of us had 

 ever seen one alive. 



" It was easy enough getting to the top of the 

 island, but from there on it was all a tangle of 

 gullies and ravines, and when we finally came to 

 the other side we found ourselves looking down 

 from the edge of a three-hundred-foot cliff. It 

 made us dizzy, as you may imagine, to peer over 

 it, but we lay out flat on our stomachs and rested 

 our heads on our hands and our elbows on the 

 rocks, and studied that bluff. It was straight 

 up and down, like the Swift's checkered sides. 

 There was no beach at the bottom. There 

 was a dead flat calm, no waves at all save the 

 everlasting heave and swell that never ceased and 

 never will cease ; and yet the breakers were 

 white at the foot of the cliff and we could hear 

 their roar. It was what we sailors call an iron- 

 bound coast. 



" Our hearts went down into the soles of our 

 boots. Climb down that precipice ? Crawl along 

 at the water's edge ? Not by a jugful ! 



