Chapter 2

TREVENNACK.

It was a stiff, hot climb to the top of the cliff; but as soon as he
reached it, Eustace Le Neve gazed about him, enchanted at the outlook.
He was not in love with Cornwall, as far as he'd seen it yet; and to
say the truth, except in a few broken seaward glens, that high and
barren inland plateau has little in it to attract or interest anyone,
least of all a traveler fresh from the rich luxuriance of South
American vegetation. But the view that burst suddenly upon Eustace Le
Neve's eye as he gained the summit of that precipitous serpentine
bluff fairly took his breath away. It was a rich and varied one. To
the north and west loomed headland after headland, walled in by steep
crags, and stretching away in purple perspective toward Marazion, St.
Michael's Mount, and the Penzance district. To the south and east huge
masses of fallen rock lay tossed in wild confusion over Kynance Cove
and the neighboring bays, with the bare boss of the Rill and the
Rearing Horse in the foreground. Le Neve stood and looked with open
eyes of delight. It was the first beautiful view he had seen since he
came to Cornwall; but this at least was beautiful, almost enough so to
compensate for his first acute disappointment at the barrenness and
gloom of the Lizard scenery.

For some minutes he could only stand with open eyes and gaze delighted
at the glorious prospect. Cliffs, sea, and rocks all blended with one
another in solemn harmony. Even the blackness of the great crags and
the scorched air of the brown and water-logged moorland in the rear
now ceased to oppress him. They fell into their proper place in one
consistent and well-blended picture. But, after awhile, impelled by a
desire to look down upon the next little bay beyond--for the coast is
indented with endless coves and headlands--the engineer walked on
along the top by a coastguard's path that threaded its way, marked by
whitened stones, round the points and gullies. As he did so, he
happened to notice on the very crest of the ridge that overlooked the
rock they called St. Michael's Crag a tall figure of a man silhouetted
in dark outline against the pale gray skyline. From the very first
moment Eustace Le Neve set eyes upon that striking figure this man
exerted upon him some nameless attraction. Even at this distance the
engineer could see he had a certain indefinite air of dignity and
distinction; and he poised himself lightly on the very edge of the
cliff in a way that would no doubt have made Walter Tyrrel shudder
with fear and alarm. Yet there was something about that poise quite
unearthly and uncanny; the man stood so airily on his high rocky perch
that he reminded Le Neve at once of nothing so much as of Giovanni da
Bologna's Mercury in the