A Queer Race: The Story of a Strange People — page 83: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

30 A QUEER RACE. «Starboard! Hard a starboard! For God’s sake star- board your helm!” As I whirled round the wheel the fog rolled back and revealed a scene the like of which I had never before be- held, or even imagined, and old Tom came down on the deck with a run. : CHAPTER XIII. PAINTED OR PIEBALD? RiagHT before us rose sheer out of the water a tall, white rock, at least fifty feet high. Another moment and we would have crashed against it, ‘‘ stem on.” We were saved only by '[om’s sharpness of vision, by the prompti- tude with which I obeyed his order, and the sudden lift- ing of the fog. But are we saved? ‘There are rocks to the right of us, rocks to the left of us, some white, others red, yet all of great height, with splintered, fantastic pinnacles and broken battlements like the keeps of so many ruined castles; some as naked as an Alpine peak above the snow- line, others mantled with a luxuriant growth of greenery and pendant wild flowers, while the waves leap up their sides and troops of sea-birds wheel round their summits. A veritable labyrinth of rocks; and as I look up after the first shock of surprise, I see inscribed on one of them, in old-fashioned and bold yet worn characters, these start- ling words: ‘* Here the Santa Anna ——” “© 1744,” There seems to be another word, but being covered with a sprav of ivy, I cannot make it out. Whether Bol- sover sees the inscription | do not know. He is at the bows, conning the ship, and I am steering; the passage between the line of rocks being so narrow, and the cur- rent or tide so strong, that it requires most strenuous at- tention to avoid striking. More than once the yards scrape the brow of some beetling cliff, and only by Heaven’s help and old ‘l’om’s skillful pilotage do we es- cape utter destruction. At length the stress is over, and with an indescribable sense of thankfulness and relief we sail into open water. We can breathe freciy. Danger and the dark sea are be- EeGom C JOO KS (E(0)