Estanciero

“ The raft took a sudden turn, whirled round, entered another tunnel—this time illumined in a most singular manner. The roof was formed of porous stalactite, through which a moonlit vapor appeared to pass, casting its brilliant light upon our gaunt and haggard figures. The light increased as we advanced, while the roof ascended; until at last, we were once more in a kind of water cavern, the lofty dome of which disappeared in a luminous cloud!
A rugged cavern of small extent appeared to offer a halting place to our weary bodies.
My uncle and the guide moved as men in a dream. ”

“ That brave fellow Stanhope says that, with two others at the oars, he intends to row near enough to the rock at half flood to endeavor to spring onto the ladder. I cannot persuade him that no man has ever yet succeeded in such a mad project. Look below, and see how each wave climbs around eighteen or twenty feet of the base. The thing is wildly impracticable. He will be swept off and smashed to pieces before our eyes, even if the boat escapes. ”

“ They were human voices, calling to each other as their owners crept along the path above the sea.
More fearful of them than the darkness within, she turned and hurried into the cavern, circled the elbow, and threaded the gloom, feeling her way against the cold walls. Remembering vividly the other mound near the stone chart, she tried to avoid it, and so ran plumb against the wall at the end. ”

“ It arouses something akin to awe, this passage of a steamer's wake upon the beach, a dozen feet from the door of one's tent. First, the water is sucked down, leaving for a moment a wet streak of sand or gravel, a dozen [pg 10] feet in width; in quick succession come heavy, booming waves, running at an acute angle with the shore, breaking at once into angry foam, and wasting themselves far up on the strand, for a few moments making bedlam with any driftwood which chances to have made lodgment there. ”

“ Out in the bay the high black cliffs rose above them as if pushed by a scene shifter, the light-headed laughing raving feeling left her, and as they came alongside of the barque to starboard and tied up to the channel plates she was clear headed and calm and able to get on board by the channel without assistance.
On the deck she tottered and fell in the dead swoon of exhaustion.
It is a long journey to the Stone Age and back and the man or woman who makes it is never quite, quite the same again. ”

“ At every season of the year the solid piers of the ground floor have the yellow tone and the imperceptible sweating surface that moisture gives to stone. The passer-by feels chilled as he walks close to this wall, where worn corner-stones ineffectually shelter him from the wheels of vehicles. ”

“ The foam, cast incessantly by the surf upon the rocks and sometimes more than a hundred feet in the air, had filled with sea water a natural cave situated among the high rocks overlooking the excavation. The overflowings of this reservoir caused, a little behind the escarpment, a fall of water of about an inch in breadth, and descending four or five fathoms. An occasional contribution from the rains also helped to fill the reservoir. From time to time a passing cloud dropped a shower into the rocky basin, always overflowing. ”

“ Everyone picks out the softest stone he can find to sit upon, and cares nothing whether his next neighbour be a general officer or a full private. We pick our way as well as we can across this bit of rough ground and through the groups of bathers, and then at ten yards from the head of the pier we come upon smoother ground. Here is a line of rails, and the surface has been smoothed by spreading sand over it, an improvement which has only been completed two or three days since. Before, a walk down the bunder was certain destruction to any but the most iron-shod pair of boots. ”

“ Life on shore was an agreeable change for us all, and the boys went actively to work, so that the stores were quickly brought up to the tent, piled in order, and carefully covered with sail-cloths, fastened down by pegs all round. The pinnace, being provided with an anchor, was properly moored, and her elegant appearance quite altered the looks of our harbor, hitherto occupied only by the grotesque tub-boat, and the flat, uninteresting raft. ”

“ Upon massive granite foundations rose massive walls, monster timbers with the bark and bits of green-grey moss still clinging to them upon the outer surfaces as it held on in the forests, the whole covering the small tableland save for the gravelled courtyard about which it was builded, a courtyard in which a man might wheel a running six-horse team. Just to the north of the house, set back from a cliff's edge and half hidden in a copse of young pines, was Stanton's cabin. ”

“ The entrance to the well was under a great shelf of overhanging rock, forming the mouth of a magnificent cavern, wild enough to sustain the legend. The roof was high, and the villagers had constructed steps, by which, walking erect, we reached a large pool of water, whence women were filling their cantaros. ”

“ The stench drove the three boys into the cabin, where, with closed doors and hatch, they sweltered until a shift of wind made it possible for them to breathe the outer air again. They looked in the direction from which the odor had come, and saw the anchor light of a vessel swinging, and then, as their eyes became accustomed to the darkness, they made out the deeper shadow of the vessel herself. ”

“ The structure, when thus fitted to the piles and let down to the surface of the water, floats, by reason of its buoyancy. The upper ends of the piles are now framed together with ties, so as to stand firm. The preparatory steps for building and setting the pier having thus been consummated, and additional sections provided, so as to be brought into use as required, the stonemason commences to lay the solid pier within the floating coffer-dam, using for the purpose common stone, or other material deemed suitable. ”

“ Behind the concreted crescent of shore-line, to which the roadstead pier seemed like an arrow set in a drawn bow, stood irregular lines of thatched huts, of mud and bamboo wattle, crowding on narrow streets that sloped to the centre and held sidewalks no wider than a wall-top. ”

“ Here's your pier bottom. Here's the river slip. We row into that slip without showin' a light, and with the kicker shut off, naturally. We slide in under without makin' a sound. Then we get our measurements. Then we make fast to this pile, and throw out a line to this one, and a second to this one, to hold us steady against the tide and the ferry wash. Then we find our right plank. We can do that by pokin' a flashlight up against 'em where it'll never be seen. ”

“ Through the lock our steamer took us in tow again, along the most awful sewer, with chemical works, scavengers' heaps, manure-factories, and unnamable abominations on its banks – the lighter in front of us, being deeply laden, churning up the pestilential mud from the bottom. ”

“ Then the boatman stands on the narrow plank hung by chains to each lock gate, and with his crowbar chunks up the sluice, with a pleasant ringing sound of iron on iron, securing the raised sluice with a shining iron pin that hangs by a little chain of its own against the front of the lock gate, like an ornament for a gentleman's fob. If you get your hand under the pin and the sluice happens to sink, you hurt your hand. ”

“ Why we had not discovered these stairs from seaward was because they did not come squarely down to the water’s edge at right angles to the wall, but instead lay, as it were, parallel to it in a niche within the wall, so that they were somewhat sheltered from observation from the sea.
As we broke upon them suddenly, therefore, Mistress Lucy clutched my arm. We naturally drew together at the sight of such gods, or devils, in stone. ”

“ Then the clay wall of Stanfield's mill is as beautiful as a piece of chalk cliff, all worn into furrows by the rain, coated with mosses, and rooted to the ground by a heap of crumbled stone, embroidered with grass and creeping plants. But this is not a serviceable state for a windmill to be in. The essence of a windmill, as distinguished from all other mills, is, that it 8 should turn round, and be a spinning thing, ready always to face the wind; as light, therefore, as possible, and as vibratory; so that it is in no wise good for it to approximate itself to the nature of chalk cliffs. ”

“ But sometimes a foundation must be formed, not only to afford a support to the fabric, but to raise the floor above the influence of damp or of low-lying noxious vapours. We have heard of barges or vessels being grounded and houses built upon them, and have in fact seen instances of this as well as of the deck houses being removed from wrecks and set up, sometimes raised on low walls, forming very comfortable habitations ashore, and of tents being set up as roofs over walls of rough stone. ”

“ There was a single hut, at which a woman was washing corn, with a naked child near her on the ground, its face, arms, and body one running sore, a picture of squalid poverty. In front was a large muddy plain, through the centre of which ran a straight cut called a canal, with an embankment on one side dry, the mud baked hard, and bleached by the sun. ”

“ He had walked down to the sands with his aunt and there were assembled various younger members of the Balfour clique, and some whom age and sex ought perhaps to have taught to despise, though it had not, the hoydenish pleasures of 'a sea-house.' A 'sea-house,' for the benefit of the uninitiated, is a deep hole dug in the sand while the tide is out, and the sand taken from the hole is built round in broad, high walls to make the fort resist as long as possible the rush of the incoming waves. ”

“ The Dome course occupies much time in laying.
The seamen landed 2 casks of pozzolano and lime, 4 joggles and 6 blocks of stone, which discharged the praam-boats. The artificers laid 8 stones of the Eighty-second course, forming part of the dome-roof of the library. This course consisted of 16 stones, which were attended with much more difficulty than those of the ordinary courses: from their projecting into the apartment, and being also more easily injured, they required more precaution in laying and in the fitting of the joggles. ”

“ Some have even supposed, that the materials may be transported to the Rock under these circumstances by a float of cork or timber, and when the vessel is thus cleared of her cargo, she may be hauled off again, and so make sail. The stones, when landed, if not immediately built, may be stowed into the cast-iron coffer-dam, which, for this purpose, will be found of the greatest use, while the lower courses of the building are in progress; and as the work advances, other plans will present themselves. ”

“ There was a lot of human nature lurking in the depths of the lagoon, comedy and tragedy.
An English rock-pool has its marvels. You can fancy the marvels of this vast rock-pool, nine miles round and varying from a third to half a mile broad, swarming with tropic life and flights of painted fishes; where the glittering albicore passed beneath the boat like a fire and a shadow; where the boat’s reflection lay as clear on the bottom as though the water were air; where the sea, pacified by the reef, told, like a little child, its dreams. ”

“ I liked the sounds of the tide. I believed, at first, the Phantom had missed the dock in the smoke; then I thought it might be another boat, and some secret plot going on about the mills; something Paul should know. I am not a very brave woman, as you have often said, and I crept under the bar to wait. I was even afraid when I knew it was you. The key you dropped fell on my skirt. Afterwards, when the cutter came, I understood. And while the inspectors searched through these rooms, I went back to the ruin and lifted enough of the floor to get—the chest—through. ”

“ Dock-works are peculiarly liable to slips and subsidences because of their position necessarily being near to the sea, an estuary, river, or lake, and therefore in usually treacherous superficial soil of an insecure, water-charged character. ”

“ To accomplish this very strong airtight steel or wooden boxes with flat tops and no bottoms are set on the pier sites at ground water level and pumped full of compressed air while men enter them and excavating the soil, undermine them, so they sink, until they land on the rock and are filled solid with concrete to form the bases of the foundation piers. ”

“ The estuaries of rivers appeal strongly to an adventurous imagination. This appeal is not always a charm, for there are estuaries of a particularly dispiriting ugliness: lowlands, mud-flats, or perhaps barren sandhills without beauty of form or amenity of aspect, covered with a shabby and scanty vegetation conveying the impression of poverty and uselessness. Sometimes such an ugliness is merely a repulsive mask. ”

“ Before I set up my tent, I drew a half eircle before the hollow place, which extended twenty yards; and in this half circle pitched two rows of strong stakes, driving them into the ground like piles. Then I took the pieces of eable I had cut in the ship, and laid them in rows one upon another at the top; and this fence was so strong, that neither man nor beast could well enter it. ”

“ Prisoners are landed on the eastern side, and such advantage is taken of the natural conformation of this precipitous rock, that a man climbing the steep zigzag stairway which leads to the inhabited portion is hidden from sight of any craft upon the water even four or five hundred yards away. Nothing seen from the outside gives any token of habitation. The fishing-boat, I suppose, is kept for cases of emergency, that the Governor may communicate with the shore if necessary. ”