Nevertheless, on closer inspection the stone rim drew almost imperceptibly nearer.
The morning sun, slightly overcast as usual, indicated shadows faintly, yet sufficiently to divide the slope into two symmetrical parts, one darker, one brighter, slanting a sharp point of light toward the bottom where the water rose along the slope, lapping between the strands of seaweed.
The movement bringing the little steamer nearer the triangle of stone that thus emerged from the darkness was itself an oblique one, and so deliberate as to be constantly approaching absolute immobility.
Measured and even, despite slight variations of amplitude and rhythm perceptible to the eye but scarcely exceeding six inches and two or three seconds, the sea rose and fell in the sheltered angle formed by the landing slip. On the lower section of this inclined plane the water alternately revealed and submerged great clumps of green seaweed. From time to time, at what were doubtless regular intervals—though probably of a more complex frequency—a powerful wash of water broke this rocking rhythm and the two masses of liquid, rushing against each other, collided with a slapping sound and spattered some drops of foam a little higher up against the embankment.
The ship’s side—now parallel to the embankment—continued to advance; the channel between must have narrowed little by little as that movement extended the length of the pier. Mathias tried to find a point of reference. In the angle of the landing slip the water rose and fell against the brown stone embankment. This far out from shore none of the wreckage covering most harbor floors was visible from the surface. The seaweed that grew at the bottom of the landing slip, rising and falling again and again with the wash of water, was as fresh and glossy as the kind found only at great depths; it was never exposed to the air for very long at a time. As each little wave rolled in, it lifted the free ends of the clumps of seaweed, drew them down immediately afterward, and finally abandoned them once again, limp and outstretched on the streaming stones, trailing masses of tangled ribbon down the slope. From time to time a more powerful wash of water flooded the landing slip a little higher, leaving, as it flowed back, a shiny puddle in a hollow of the pavement that reflected the sky for a few seconds before it quickly disappeared between the stones.
Mathias decided on a mark shaped like a figure eight, cut clearly enough in the steep, recessed embankment to make a good point of reference. The mark was exactly opposite him, that is, ten or fifteen feet to the left of the point where the landing slip emerged from the pier. A sudden rise in the water level caused it to disappear. When, after forcing himself to keep his eyes in the same place for several seconds, he saw it again, he was not quite sure he was looking at the same mark—other irregularities in the stone looked just as much like—or unlike—the two little coupled circles whose shape he still remembered.
Something fell, thrown from the top of the pier, landing on the surface of the water—a piece of paper the color of a pack of cigarettes. The water rose in the sheltered angle of the landing slip, colliding with the backwash from its sloping surface. The periodic shock of this collision occurred just where the ball of blue paper was floating, and it was engulfed with a slapping sound; some drops of foam were spattered against the embankment, just as a more powerful wash of water again submerged the strands of seaweed and reached as far as the hollow in the pavement.
The water fell back at once; the limp seaweed remained outstretched on the wet rocks, trailing long strands down the slope. In the bright triangle, the little puddle reflected the sky.
Before it had time to disappear between the stones, this reflection was suddenly darkened, as if by the shadow of some great bird. Mathias raised his eyes. Flying from astern, the gray gull imperturbably described again, with the same deliberation, its horizontal trajectory—wings motionless and outspread in a double arc between the slightly drooping tips, head cocked to the right, one round eye fixed on the water—or the ship—or nothing at all.
According to their respective positions, it could not have been this gull’s shadow that had just passed over the little puddle.
In the bright triangle the hollow of the pavement was dry. At the lower edge of the landing slip a rising wash of water had turned the seaweed so that it spread upward. Ten or fifteen feet to the left Mathias noticed the mark in the shape of a figure eight.
It was an eight on its side: two coupled circles of the same size, a little less than six inches in diameter. At the point of tangency appeared a reddish excrescence that looked like the rust-corroded pivot of an old iron ring. The circles on either side might have been worn gradually into the stone by a ring fastened vertically into the embankment” by the pivot and swinging freely to the right or left in the wash of the ebb tide. Such a ring had doubtless been used for mooring boats at the pier ahead of the landing slip.
But the ring had been set so low in the embankment that it must have been underwater most of the time—sometimes several yards beneath the surface. Furthermore, its modest size scarcely seemed adequate to the thickness of the ropes ordinarily used for mooring even the smallest fishing boats. The only rope that could have passed through such a ring would have to be a thin, strong cord. Mathias turned his eyes ninety degrees toward the crowd of passengers, then lowered them to the deck. He had often heard the story before. It was on a rainy day; he had been left alone in the house; instead of doing the next day’s arithmetic homework he had spent all afternoon sitting at the back window, drawing a sea gull that had perched on one of the fence posts at the end of the garden.
It had been a rainy day—to all appearances a rainy day like the rest. He was sitting at the table wedged into the window recess, facing the window, two big books under the chair so he could work comfortably. The room must have been very dark; the table top reflected only enough light from outside to make the waxed oak gleam—very faintly. The notebook’s white paper constituted the only bright thing in the room, along with the child’s face, and perhaps his hands as well. He was sitting on a chair on top of two dictionaries—had been there for hours, probably. He had almost finished his drawing.
The room was very dark. Outside it was raining. The big gull remained motionless on its perch. He had not seen it land there. He did not know how long it had been where it was. Usually they did not come so near the house, not even in the worst weather, although between the garden and the sea there was no more than three hundred yards of open ground rolling toward an indentation in the coast, bounded on the left by the beginning of the cliff. The garden here was nothing but a piece of moorland planted with potatoes every year and fenced off with barbed-wire fastened to wooden posts to keep out the sheep. The unwieldy size of these posts indicated that originally they had not been intended for such use. The fence post at the end of the central path was even thicker than the rest, in spite of the slenderness of the lattice-gate it supported; it was a cylindrical post, a pine log roughly trimmed, and its almost flat top, a yard and a half above the ground, formed an ideal perch for the gull. The bird’s head was turned toward the fence, in profile, one eye looking at the sea, the other at the house.
Between the fence and the house the garden, at this time of year, consisted of little more than a few late weeds piercing the carpet of dead vegetation that had been rotting in the rain for several days.