avalanche and the knave a criminal.

The child continued to advance into the mist. The fog presents but a

soft obstacle; hence its danger. It yields, and yet persists. Mist, like

snow, is full of treachery. The child, strange wrestler at war with all

these risks, had succeeded in reaching the bottom of the descent, and

had gained Chesil. Without knowing it he was on an isthmus, with the

ocean on each side; so that he could not lose his way in the fog, in the

snow, or in the darkness, without falling into the deep waters of the

gulf on the right hand, or into the raging billows of the high sea on

the left. He was travelling on, in ignorance, between these two abysses.

The Isthmus of Portland was at this period singularly sharp and rugged.

Nothing remains at this date of its past configuration. Since the idea

of manufacturing Portland stone into Roman cement was first seized, the

whole rock has been subjected to an alteration which has completely

changed its original appearance. Calcareous lias, slate, and trap are

still to be found there, rising from layers of conglomerate, like teeth

from a gum; but the pickaxe has broken up and levelled those bristling,

rugged peaks which were once the fearful perches of the ossifrage. The

summits exist no longer where the labbes and the skua gulls used to

flock together, soaring, like the envious, to sully high places. In vain

might you seek the tall monolith called Godolphin, an old British word,

signifying "white eagle." In summer you may still gather on those

surfaces, pierced and perforated like a sponge, rosemary, pennyroyal,

wild hyssop, and sea-fennel which when infused makes a good cordial, and

that herb full of knots, which grows in the sand and from which they

217

The Man Who Laughs