Cyril G Wates

The Visitation Cyril G Wates

STARTLED at Gordon Caswell's strange question, I followed the direction of his gaze and saw with amazement that the entire breadth of the harbor mouth was bridged by a natural breakwater, against which the waves from the open Pacific were bursting in columns of spray. No opening was visible in the reef and I was completely at a loss to answer Caswell's question as to how we had crossed it. A steamer of thirty thousand tons does not fly and even allowing for the height of the waves, it was hardly conceivable that we could have been washed over the reef without grounding."There must be an opening somewhere, Mr. Caswell," I said. "When you have had breakfast and it's lighter, please take number three launch and explore the reef."While the second officer was away, the passengers began to throng the decks and many were the expressions of wonder at the remarkable harbor into which we had so providentially been carried. The black cliffs, which lost none of their height with the increasing light, were not smooth but broken by vertical seams at regular intervals. The whole scene reminded me of some picture I had seen, I could not tell where. It was Ian McFane, whose birthplace was in northern Scotland, who remarked on the close resemblance between these cliffs and the basaltic formation of the famous Fingall's Cave in the Hebrides. The vertical clefts we observed were indeed the spaces between huge hexagonal columns extending from the surface of the water to the top of the cliffs without a break, giving the semblance of a gigantic temple built for some ghastly cult of devil worship.