The great waves came roaring in, and dashed themselves against the walls of slate in sheets of foam, to fall back baffled and groaning.

They had eaten the cliff away in two dark frowning spots, which his guide said were caverns, approachable at low-water; but the rock itself on which the castle stood defied them; they had only succeeded in insulating it, except for a narrow tongue of land, which now formed the sole access to it from the shore.

Even without any historical or poetic association, the object before them--rising bare and sheer into the air to such a height--on which a swarm of gulls, shrunk to the size of bees, were clanging faintly, was grand and striking; but the place had been the hold of knights and kings a thousand years ago and more.

The young girl pointed out to Richard where the main-land cliff had once projected so as to meet the rock, and showed him on the former's brow some fragments of rude masonry.

"That was the ancient barbacan," she said, "once joined to the castle by a draw-bridge, as was supposed, which, when drawn up, left Gethin so that neither man nor beast could approach it without permission of its defenders.