They had not noticed the wind much as they drove along; but now, when they went out on the high table-land of rock, it seemed to be blowing half a gale across the sea. The sunlight sparkled on the glass of the lighthouse, and the great yellow shaft of stone stretched away upward into a perfect blue. As clear a blue lay far beneath them when the sea came rushing in among the lofty crags and sharp pinnacles of rock, bursting into foam at their feet and sending long jets of white spray up into the air. In front of the great wall of rock the sea-birds wheeled and screamed, and on the points of some of the islands stood several scarts, motionless figures of jet black on the soft brown and green of the rock. And what was this island they looked down upon from over one of the bays? Surely a mighty reproduction by Nature herself of the Sphynx of the Egyptian plains. Could anything have been more striking and unexpected and impressive than the sudden discovery of this great mass of rock resting in the wild sea, its hooded head turned away toward the North and hidden from the spectator on land, its gigantic bulk surrounded by a foam of breakers? Lavender, with his teeth set hard against the wind, must needs take down the outlines of this strange scene upon paper, while Sheila crouched at her father’s side for shelter, and Ingram was chiefly engaged in holding on to his cap. “It blows here a bit,” said Lavender amid the roar of the waves. “I suppose in the Winter-time the sea will sometimes break across this place?” “Ay, and over the top of the light-house, too,” said Mackenzie with a laugh, as though he was rather proud of the way his native seas behaved. “Sheila,” said Ingram, “I never saw _you_ take refuge from the wind before.” “It is because we will be standing still,” said the girl, with a smile which was scarcely visible, because she had half hidden her face in her father’s great gray beard. “But when Mr. Lavender is finished we will go down to the great hole in the rocks that you will have seen before, and perhaps he will make a picture of that, too.” “You don’t mean to say you would go down there, Sheila?” said Ingram, “and in this wind!” “I have been down many times before.” “Indeed, you will do nothing of the kind, Sheila,” said her father; “you will go back to the light-house if you like--yes, you may do that--and I will go down the rocks with Mr. Lavender; but it iss not for a young lady to go about among the rocks, like a fisherman’s lad that wants the birds’ eggs or such nonsense.” It was quite evident that Mackenzie had very little fear of his daughter not being able to accomplish the descent of the rocks safely enough; it was a matter of dignity. And so Sheila was at length persuaded to go across the plain to a sheltered place, to await there until the others should clamber down to the great and naturally-formed tunnel through the rocks that the artist was to sketch.