With the Devil's Rock the most imposing tract of Nepenthean
cliff--scenery came to an abrupt end. That mighty escarpment was its
furthest outpost. Thereafter the land fell seawards no longer
precipitously, but in wavy earthen slopes intersected by ravines which
the downward-rushing torrents of winter had washed out of the loose
soil. It was at the termination of one of these dry stream-beds that
Mr. Heard set foot on shore. Panting under the relentless heat he wound
his way along a path once carefully tended and engineered, but now
crumbling to decay.
Before him, on a treeless brown eminence, silhouetted against the blue
sky, stood the ruin. It was a fanciful woe-begone structure, utterly
desolate. The plaster, gnawed away by winds laden with searching
sea-moisture, had fallen to earth, exposing the underlying masonry of
cheap construction whose rusty colour was the same as that of the
ground from which it had arisen, and into which it now seemed ready and
eager to descend. Everything useful or portable, everything that spoke
of man's occupation, everything that suggested life and comfort--the
porcelain tiles, woodwork, window-panes, roofings, mosaic or marble
floors, leaden pipes--all this had been carried away long ago.
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