DOI Artikel:
D'Arcy, Ella: The web of Maya
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27806#0296
292 The Web of Maya
Le Tas on foot, while he smokes his cigar, as he waits for you in
safety at the Saint Maclou end.
Le Tas, as its name suggests, is just a mound or heap of rocks.
Flung up there by the sea, ages ago, the same sea has already so
undermined it, so under-tunnelled it, that with a few ages more
it must crumble in, and sink again to the ocean bed from which
it came.
There are very few houses on Saint Maclou ; besides the
Seigneurie, the Rectory, and the Belle Vue Hotel, perhaps only
some forty homesteads and cottages. On Le Tas there are
but five all told. You come upon four of these shortly after
crossing the Coupee. Grouped together in a hollow which
hides them from the road, they are still further hidden by
the trees planted to shelter them from the great westerly gales.
But, should you happen to make your way down to them, you
would discover a homely and genial picture : little gardens ablaze
with flowers, tethered cows munching the grass, fowls clacking,
pigeons preening themselves and cooing, children playing on the
thresholds, perhaps a woman, in the black sun-bonnet of the
Islands, hanging her linen out to dry, between the gnarled apple
trees of the little orchard on the right.
When you have left these cottages behind you, Le Tas
grows wilder and more barren with every step you take. At first
you walk through gorse and bracken ; patches of purple heather
contrast with straggling patches of golden ragwort. But, further
on, nothing grows from the thin layer of wind-carried soil, save a
short grass, spread out like a mantle of worn green velvet, through
which bare granite knees and elbows protrude at every point.
You see no sign of life, but a goat or two browsing on the steep
declivities, the rabbits scudding among the ferns, the rows of
cormorants standing in dark sedateness on the rocks below. You
hear
Le Tas on foot, while he smokes his cigar, as he waits for you in
safety at the Saint Maclou end.
Le Tas, as its name suggests, is just a mound or heap of rocks.
Flung up there by the sea, ages ago, the same sea has already so
undermined it, so under-tunnelled it, that with a few ages more
it must crumble in, and sink again to the ocean bed from which
it came.
There are very few houses on Saint Maclou ; besides the
Seigneurie, the Rectory, and the Belle Vue Hotel, perhaps only
some forty homesteads and cottages. On Le Tas there are
but five all told. You come upon four of these shortly after
crossing the Coupee. Grouped together in a hollow which
hides them from the road, they are still further hidden by
the trees planted to shelter them from the great westerly gales.
But, should you happen to make your way down to them, you
would discover a homely and genial picture : little gardens ablaze
with flowers, tethered cows munching the grass, fowls clacking,
pigeons preening themselves and cooing, children playing on the
thresholds, perhaps a woman, in the black sun-bonnet of the
Islands, hanging her linen out to dry, between the gnarled apple
trees of the little orchard on the right.
When you have left these cottages behind you, Le Tas
grows wilder and more barren with every step you take. At first
you walk through gorse and bracken ; patches of purple heather
contrast with straggling patches of golden ragwort. But, further
on, nothing grows from the thin layer of wind-carried soil, save a
short grass, spread out like a mantle of worn green velvet, through
which bare granite knees and elbows protrude at every point.
You see no sign of life, but a goat or two browsing on the steep
declivities, the rabbits scudding among the ferns, the rows of
cormorants standing in dark sedateness on the rocks below. You
hear