Caleb, meanwhile, sat with his host in the clock-room, smoking many a meerschaum, and listening to the keeper’s talk about his beautiful charge,—­a pet as well as a duty with him, obviously.

With the same fond pride with which a mother affects to complain of the care she lavishes upon her darling child would the old man speak of the time necessary to keep his six hundred lenses clear and spotless, each one being rubbed daily with softest doeskin saturated with rouge, to keep the windows of the lantern free from constantly accumulating saline incrustations,—­of the care with which the lamp, when burning, must be watched, lest intrusive fly or miller should drown in the great reservoir of oil and be drawn into the air-passages.  This duty, and the necessity of winding up the “clock” (which forces the oil up into the wick) every half-hour, require a constant watch to be kept through the night, which is divided between the chief and two assistant keepers.

The morning after their arrival, our travellers, strong with the vigor of the young day, set forth to explore the cliffs, bidding adieu to original Youth, who, standing ready to depart, beside his horse, was carolling the following ditty in glorification of his native town:—­

    “Ga’ed Light is out o’ sight,
        Menemshee Crik is sandy,
    Holmes’s Hole’s a pooty place,
        An’ Oldtown Pint’s onhandy.”

(Oldtown being synonymous with Edgartown, the rival seaport.)

Leaving this young patriot to his national anthem, a walk of a few hundred feet through deep sword-edged grass brought our explorers to the edge of a cliff, down which they gazed with awe-hushed breath.  Below them, at a depth of a hundred and fifty feet, the thunderous waves beat upon the foot of the cliff over whose brink they peered, and which, stern and impassive as it had stood for ages, frowned back with the mute strength of endurance upon the furious, eager waves, which now and again dashed themselves fiercely against its front, only to be flung back shattered into a thousand glittering fragments.

The cliffs themselves are very curious and beautiful, being composed of red and black ochre, the largest cliff showing the one color on its northern and the other on its southern face.  The forms are various,—­some showing a sheer descent, with no vestige of earth or vegetation, their faces seamed with scars won in the elemental war which they have so long withstood.  In other spots the cliff has been rent into sharp pinnacles, varied and beautiful in hue.

One spot, in particular, which became Mysie’s favorite resort, was at once singular and beautiful in its conformation.  About three feet above the water’s edge lay a level plateau, its floor of loose, sandy, black conglomerate, abounding in sparkling bits of quartz and sulphate of iron; beneath this lay a bed of beautifully marbled and variegated clay, its edge showing all along the black border of the plateau like the brilliant wreath with which a brunette binds her dusky hair.  Blocks of this clay, fallen upon the beach, and wet with every flowing wave, lay glistening in the sunlight and looking like—­