In this
lighthouse, which is a circular white tower, eighty feet high, on the
edge of the cliff, is a book for visitors to sign their names: and I
will write something down here in black and white: for the secret is
between God only, and me: After reading a few of the names, I took my
pencil, and I wrote my name there.
* * * * *
The reef before the Head stretches out a quarter of a mile, looking bold
in the dead low-water that then was, and showing to what extent the sea
has pushed back this coast, three wrecks impaled on them, and a big
steamer quite near, waiting for the first movements of the already
strewn sea to perish. All along the cliff-wall to the bluff crowned by
Scarborough Castle northward, and to the low vanishing coast of
Holderness southward, appeared those cracks and caves which had brought
me here, though there seemed no attempts at barricades; however, I got
down a rough slope on the south side to a rude wild beach, strewn with
wave-worn masses of chalk: and never did I feel so paltry and short a
thing as there, with far-outstretched bays of crags about me, their
bluffs encrusted at the base with stale old leprosies of shells and
barnacles, and crass algae-beards, and, higher up, the white cliff all
stained and weather-spoiled, the rock in some parts looking quite
chalky, and elsewhere gleaming hard and dull like dirty marbles, while
in the huge withdrawals of the coast yawn darksome gullies and caverns.
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