We tried to
hold on with our hands and feet, but we slid on their slippery
asperities. The cliff was so very high that it quite frightened us to
look up at it. Although it crushed us by its formidable placidity, still
it fascinated us, for we could not help looking at it and it did not
tire our eyes.
A swallow passed us and we watched its flight; it came from the sea; it
ascended slowly through the air, cutting the luminous, fluid atmosphere
with its sharp, outstretched wings that seemed to enjoy being absolutely
untrammelled. The bird ascended higher and higher, rose above the cliff
and finally disappeared.
Meanwhile we were creeping over the rocks, the perspective of which was
renewed by each bend of the coast. Once in a while, when the rocks
ended, we walked on square stones that were as flat as marble slabs and
seamed by almost symmetrical furrows, which appeared like the tracks of
some ancient road of another world.
In some places were great pools of water as calm as their greenish
depths and as limpid and motionless as a woodland stream on its bed of
cresses. Then the rocks would reappear closer than before and more
numerous.
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