He saw some distance off a descent, and at the foot of the descent, among shapeless conformations of rock, blurred by the mist, what seemed to be either a sandbank or a tongue of land, joining probably to the plains of the horizon the tableland he had just crossed.  It was evident he must pass that way.

He had, in fact, arrived at the Isthmus of Portland, a diluvian alluvium which is called Chess Hill.

He began to descend the side of the plateau.

The descent was difficult and rough.  It was (with less of ruggedness, however) the reverse of the ascent he had made on leaving the creek.  Every ascent is balanced by a decline.  After having clambered up he crawled down.

He leapt from one rock to another at the risk of a sprain, at the risk of falling into the vague depths below.  To save himself when he slipped on the rock or on the ice, he caught hold of handfuls of weeds and furze, thick with thorns, and their points ran into his fingers.  At times he came on an easier declivity, taking breath as he descended; then came on the precipice again, and each step necessitated an expedient.  In descending precipices, every movement solves a problem.  One must be skilful under pain of death.  These problems the child solved with an instinct which would have made him the admiration of apes and mountebanks.  The descent was steep and long.  Nevertheless he was coming to the end of it.

Little by little it was drawing nearer the moment when he should land on the Isthmus, of which from time to time he caught a glimpse.  At intervals, while he bounded or dropped from rock to rock, he pricked up his ears, his head erect, like a listening deer.  He was hearkening to a diffused and faint uproar, far away to the left, like the deep note of a clarion.  It was a commotion of winds, preceding that fearful north blast which is heard rushing from the pole, like an inroad of trumpets.  At the same time the child felt now and then on his brow, on his eyes, on his cheeks, something which was like the palms of cold hands being placed on his face.  These were large frozen flakes, sown at first softly in space, then eddying, and heralding a snowstorm.  The child was covered with them.  The snowstorm, which for the last hour had been on the sea, was beginning to gain the land.  It was slowly invading the plains.  It was entering obliquely, by the north-west, the tableland of Portland.

BOOK THE SECOND.

THE HOOKER AT SEA.

CHAPTER I.

SUPERHUMAN LAWS.

The snowstorm is one of the mysteries of the ocean.  It is the most obscure of things meteorological—­obscure in every sense of the word.  It is a mixture of fog and storm; and even in our days we cannot well account for the phenomenon.  Hence many disasters.