文档介绍：A MESSAGE FROM THE SEA
A MESSAGE FROM
THE SEA
By Charles Dickens

1
A MESSAGE FROM THE SEA
I--THE VILLAGE
"And a mighty sing'lar and pretty place it is, as ever I saw in all the
days of my life!" said Captain Jorgan, looking up at it.
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 ession 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. As the beasts of burden ascended laden, or descended
light, they got so lost at intervals in the floating clouds of village smoke,
that they seemed to dive down some of the village chimneys, e to
the surface again far off, high above others. No two houses in the village
were alike, in chimney, size, shape, door, window, gable, roof-tree,
anything. The sides of the ladders were musical with water, running
clear and bright. The staves were musical with the clattering feet of the
pack-horses and pack-donkeys, and the voices of the fishermen urging
them up, mingled with the voices of the fishermen's wives and their many
children. The pier was musical with the wash of the sea, the creaking of
capstans and windlasses, and the airy fluttering of little vanes and sail