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of Portland resemble great flagstones overlapping each other. The south
side seems to enter under the protruding slab, the north side rises over
the next one; these made ascents, which the child stepped over nimbly.
From time to time he stopped, and seemed to hold counsel with himself.
The night was becoming very dark. His radius of sight was contracting.
He now only saw a few steps before him.
All of a sudden he stopped, listened for an instant, and with an almost
imperceptible nod of satisfaction turned quickly and directed his steps
towards an eminence of moderate height, which he dimly perceived on his
right, at the point of the plain nearest the cliff. There was on the
eminence a shape which in the mist looked like a tree. The child had
just heard a noise in this direction, which was the noise neither of the
wind nor of the sea, nor was it the cry of animals. He thought that some
one was there, and in a few strides he was at the foot of the hillock.
In truth, some one was there.
That which had been indistinct on the top of the eminence was now
visible. It was something like a great arm thrust straight out of the
ground; at the upper extremity of the arm a sort of forefinger,
supported from beneath, by the thumb, pointed out horizontally; the
arm, the thumb, and the forefinger drew a square against the sky. At the
point of juncture of this peculiar finger and this peculiar thumb there
was a line, from which hung something black and shapeless. The line
moving in the wind sounded like a chain. This was the noise the child
had heard. Seen closely the line was that which the noise indicated, a
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