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The soft yet curiously harsh and raucous sound of the waves could be heard coming up from the bottom of the cliff below. Timortis stopped and leaned over the narrow edge that was separating him from space. Everything fell sharply away beneath him, and spindrift hovered in the hollows of the rocks like a jelly of jissom in July. There was a smell of barbecued seaweed. Suddenly feeling giddy, Timortis knelt down on the limp summer grass and reached out for the earth with his hands. His fingertips met some nanny-goat droppings whose strangely irregular shapes led him to conclude that somewhere in the vicinity there must be one of those sodomite goats he had thought long extinct.

Recovered and reassured, he once again felt strong enough to continue his ascent to the cliff. Great lumps of red rock shot down vertically into the shallow water, springing back almost immediately to form part of the red cliff at the top of which Timortis had been peering over.

Black reefs emerged here and there, lubricated by the surf with haloes of mist crowning them. The sun corroded the surface of the sea and then garnished it with a spice of obscene graffiti.

Timortis got up and started walking again. The path took a sharp turn. On his left autumnal bracken was mingling with budding briars. Salty crystals glistened on the bare rocks, left behind by the stacked coaster. Further inland, the earth rose sharply upwards. The path meandered round menacingly brutal masses of black granite, punctuated here and there with more nanny-goat droppings. Yet there was not a nanny-goat in sight. The Customs and Excise men exterminated them because of their droppings.

He began to walk faster, and suddenly found he was in deep shadow because the sun’s rays could not keep up with him. Refreshed by the cool shade he walked even faster. And the rows of calamines ran constantly before his eyes like undulating threads of flame.

Unmistakable signs indicated that he was approaching civilisation again, so he combed his straggling red beard. Then he strode off again lightly. Suddenly he saw The House between two crags of granite, eroded into gigantic lollies by the elements, that framed the path like the gate-posts of some mysterious and expensive Masonic lodge. The road took another sharp turn and the house completely disappeared from sight. It was still quite a distance from the cliff, and right at the very top of it. As he passed between the two somber blocks of stone it appeared again, an icy white, and completely surrounded by gaunt gesticulating trees. A white line broke away from the door, wriggled lazily down the hill and, at the end of its journey, joined the path. Timortis stepped on to it. When he had almost reached the hilltop he began to run because he could hear somebody screaming.

A red silk ribbon had been thoughtfully stretched from the wide open gate to the steps leading up to the front door of the house. The ribbon ran up the stairs inside and ended in the bedroom. Timortis hastily followed it. The mother was lying on the bed, suffering the hundred and thirteen pangs of childbirth. Timortis dropped his leather bag, rolled up his sleeves and lathered his hands in a crude pumice trough.