The Shadow of the Sword | Page 4

from their burrows (for the comic little sea-parrot bores the earth like a rabbit, before she lays her eggs in it like a bird), and sailing swiftly for a hundred yards, wheel, and come back, past the intruder's ears again, to their burrows once more; round and round, in a slow circle above his head, a great cormorant--of the black, not the green species--sails silently and perpetually, uttering no sound; and facing him, snowing the surface of the cliffs, sit the innumerable birds, with their millions of little eyes on his. The puffins on the green earthy spots, peering out with vari-coloured bills; the guillemots in earth and rock alike, wherever they can find a spot to rest an egg; the little dove-like tern; male and female, sitting like love-birds beak to beak, on the tiny little coignes of vantage on the solid rocks below the climber's feet. Of the numberless birds which surround him on every side, few take the trouble to stir, though those few make a perfect snow around him; but the air is full of a twittering and a trembling, and a chattering and rustling, which would drive a less experienced cragsman crazy on the spot. As he slips nimbly among them, they grumble a little in their bird fashion; that is all. Occasionally an infuriated would-be mother, robbed of her egg, makes belief to fly at his face, but quails at the first movement of his fowler's staff; and now and then an angry puffin, as his hand slips into her hole, clings to his finger like a parrot, is drawn out a ruffled wrath of feathers, and is flung shrieking away into the air.
The fowler's feet are naked--so his toes sometimes suffer from a random bite or peck, but his only answer is a merry laugh. He flits about as if completely unconscious of danger, or if conscious, as if the peril of the sport made it exhilarating tenfold.
It is exciting to see him moving about in his joyous strength amid the dizzy void, with the sunset burning on his figure, the sea sparkling beneath his feet. His head is bare; his hair, of perfect golden hue, floats to his shoulders, and is ever and anon blown into his face, but with a toss of his head he flings it behind him. The head is that of a lion; the throat, the chin, leonine; and the eyes, even when they sparkle as now, have the strange, far-away, visionary look of the king of animals. His figure, agile as it is, is herculean; for is he not a Gwenfern, and when, since the memory of a man, did a Gwenfern ever stand less than six feet in his sabots? Stripped of his raiment and turned to stone, he might stand for Heracles--so large of mould is he, so mighty of limb. But even in his present garb--the peasant dress of dark blue, shirt open at the throat, gaily-coloured sash, and trousers fastened at the knee with a knot of scarlet ribbon--he looks sufficiently herculean.
He plies his trade. Secured to his waist hangs a net of dark earth-coloured eggs, and it is nearly full.
The sunset deepens, its flashes grow more blinding as they strike on the reddened cliff but the fowler lifts up his eyes in the light, and sees the dark face of the maiden shining down upon him through the snow of birds.
"Rohan, Rohan!" she cries again.
He waves his fowler's staff and smiles, preparing to ascend.
"I am coming, Marcelle!" he calls.
And through the flying snow he slowly comes, till it is no longer snow around his head, but snow around his feet. Partly aided by the rope, partly by the hook of his fowler's staff, he clings with hands and feet, creeps from ledge to ledge, crawling steadily upward. Sometimes the loose conglomerate crumbles in his hands or beneath his feet, and he swings with his whole weight upon the rope; then for a moment his colour goes, from excitement, not fear, and his breath comes quickly. No dizziness with him! his calm blue eyes look upward and downward with equal unconcern, and he knows each footstep of his way. Slowly, almost laboriously, he seems to move, yet his progress is far more rapid than it appears to the eye, and in a few minutes he has drawn himself up the overhanging summit of the crag, reached the top, gripped the horn of rock with hands and knees, and swung himself on to the greensward, close to the girl's side.
All the prospect above the cliffs opens suddenly on his sight. The cloudy east is stained with deep crimson bars, against which the grassy hills, and fresh-ploughed fields, and the squares of trees whose foliage hides the crowning farms, stand out in distinct and beautiful