To landward, all richness, softness, and peace; to seaward, a waste and howling wilderness of rock and roller, barren to the fisherman, and hopeless to the shipwrecked mariner.
In only one of these "mouths" is a landing for boats, made possible by a long sea-wall of rock, which protects it from the rollers of the Atlantic; and that mouth is Marsland, the abode of the White Witch, Lucy Passmore; whither, as Sir Richard Grenville rightly judged, the Jesuits were gone.

But before the Jesuits came, two other persons were standing on that lonely beach, under the bright October moon, namely, Rose Salterne and the White Witch herself; for Rose, fevered with curiosity and superstition, and allured by the very wildness and possible danger of the spell, had kept her appointment; and, a few minutes before midnight, stood on the gray shingle beach with her counsellor.
"You be safe enough here to-night, miss.

My old man is snoring sound abed, and there's no other soul ever sets foot here o' nights, except it be the mermaids now and then.

Goodness, Father, where's our boat?
It ought to be up here on the pebbles." Rose pointed to a strip of sand some forty yards nearer the sea, where the boat lay.
"Oh, the lazy old villain! he's been round the rocks after pollock this evening, and never taken the trouble to hale the boat up.

I'll trounce him for it when I get home.