[The Adventures of Captain Horn by Frank Richard Stockton]@TWC D-Link bookThe Adventures of Captain Horn CHAPTER III 3/15
But he shook his head. "I have no ideas about it," he said, "except that it must have been some sort of a landmark.
It looks out toward the sea, and perhaps the ancient inhabitants put it there so that people in ships, coming near enough to the coast, should know where they were.
Perhaps it was intended to act as a lighthouse to warn seamen off a dangerous coast. But I must say that I do not see how it could do that, for they would have had to come pretty close to the shore to see it, unless they had better glasses than we have." The sun was now near the horizon, and Maka was lifted to his feet by the captain, and ordered to stop groaning in African, and go to work to get supper on the glowing embers of the vines.
He obeyed, of course, but never did he turn his face upward to that gaunt countenance, which grinned and winked and frowned whenever a bit of twig blazed up, or the coals were stirred by the trembling negro. After supper and until the light had nearly faded from the western sky, the two ladies sat and watched that vast face upon the rocks, its features growing more and more solemn as the light decreased. "I wish I had a long-handled broom," said Mrs.Cliff, "for if the dust and smoke and ashes of burnt leaves were brushed from off its nose and eyebrows, I believe it would have a rather gracious expression." As for the captain, he went walking about on the outlying portion of the plateau, listening and watching.
But it was not stone faces he was thinking of.
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