A Message from the Sea

Captain Jorgan had to look high to look at it, for the
village was built sheer up the face of a steep and lofty
cliff. There was no road in it, there was no wheeled vehicle
in it, there was not a level yard in it. From the sea-beach
to the cliff-top two irregular rows of white houses, placed
opposite to one another, and twisting here and there, and
there and here, rose, like the sides of a long succession of
stages of crooked ladders, and you climbed up the village
or climbed down the village by the staves between, some
six feet wide or so, and made of sharp irregular stones.
The old pack-saddle, long laid aside in most parts of England
as one of the appendages of its infancy, flourished
here intact. Strings of pack-horses and pack-donkeys toiled
slowly up the staves of the ladders, bearing fish, and coal,
and such other cargo as was unshipping at the pier from
the dancing fleet of village boats, and from two or three
little coasting traders.

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A Message from the Sea