We had put in from the sea off the Harborless Shore, balked by a screaming Newfoundland northwester, allied with fog and falling night, from rounding Taunt Head, beyond which lay the snug harbor and waiting fish of Candlestick Cove. It had been labor enough, enough of cold, of sleety wind and anxious watching, to send the crew to berth in sleepy confusion when the teacups were emptied. Tumm and I sat in the companionable seclusion of the trader’s cabin, the schooner lying at ease in the shelter of Jump Harbor. In the pause, led by the wind from this warmth and peace and light to the reaches of frothy coast, I recalled the cliffs of Black Bight, upon which, as I had been told in the gray gale of that day, the inevitable had overtaken Archibald Shott. They sprang clear from the breakers, an expanse of black rock, barren as a bone, as it seemed in the sullen light, rising to a veil of fog, which, floating higher than our foremast, kept their topmost places in forbidding mystery. We had come about within stone’s-throw, so that the bleak walls, echoing upon us, doubled the thunder of the sea. They inclined from the water: I bore this impression away as the schooner darted from their proximity—an impression, too, of ledges, crevices, broken surfaces. In that tumultuous commotion, perhaps, flung then against my senses, I had small power to observe; but I fancied, I recall, that a nimble man, pursued by fear, might scale the Black Bight cliffs. There was imperative need, however, of knowing the way, else there might be neither advance nor turning back.... * * * * * “Seemed t’ be made jus’ o’ leavin’s, Arch did,” Tumm resumed, with a little twitch of scorn: “jus’ knocked t’gether,” said he, “with scraps an’ odds an’ ends from the loft an’ floor. But whatever, an a man had no harsh feelin’ again’ a body patched up out o’ the shavin’s o’ bigger folk, a lean, long-legged, rickety sort o’ carcass, like t’ break in the grip of a real man,” he continued, “nor bore no grudge again’ high cheek-bones, skimped lips, a ape’s forehead, an’ pale-green eyes, sot close to a nose like a axe an’ pushed a bit too far back, why, then,” he concluded, with a largely generous wave, “they wasn’t a deal o’ fault t’ be found with the looks o’ Archibald Shott. Wasn’t no reason ever _I_ seed why Arch shouldn’t o’ wed any maid o’ nineteen harbors an’ lived a sober, righteous, an’ fatherly life till the sea cotched un. But it seemed, somehow, that Arch must fall in love with the maid o’ Jump Harbor that was promised t’ Slow Jim Tool—a lovely lass, sir, believe _me_: a dimpled, rosy, towheaded, ripplin’ sort o’ maid, as soft as feathers an’ as plump as a oyster, with a disposition like sunshine an’—an’—well, _flowers_. She was a wonderful dear an’ tender lass, quick t’ smile, sir, quick as the sea in a sunlit southerly wind, an’ quick t’ cry, too, God bless her! in sympathy with the woes o’ folk.