Chapter: SKETCH THIRD. ROCK RODONDO.

  "For they this tight the Rock of vile Reproach,
  A dangerous and dreadful place,
  To which nor fish nor fowl did once approach,
  But yelling meaws with sea-gulls hoars and bace
  And cormoyrants with birds of ravenous race,
  Which still sit waiting on that dreadful clift."

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  "With that the rolling sea resounding soft
  In his big base them fitly answered,
  And on the Rock, the waves breaking aloft,
  A solemn ineane unto them measured."

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  "Then he the boteman bad row easily,
  And let him heare some part of that rare melody."

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  "Suddeinly an innumerable flight
  Of harmefull fowles about them fluttering cride,
  And with their wicked wings them oft did smight
  And sore annoyed, groping in that griesly night."

         *       *       *       *       *

  "Even all the nation of unfortunate
  And fatal birds about them flocked were."


To go up into a high stone tower is not only a very fine thing in
itself, but the very best mode of gaining a comprehensive view of the
region round about. It is all the better if this tower stand solitary
and alone, like that mysterious Newport one, or else be sole survivor
of some perished castle.

Now, with reference to the Enchanted Isles, we are fortunately supplied
with just such a noble point of observation in a remarkable rock, from
its peculiar figure called of old by the Spaniards, Rock Rodondo, or
Round Rock. Some two hundred and fifty feet high, rising straight from
the sea ten miles from land, with the whole mountainous group to the
south and east. Rock Rodondo occupies, on a large scale, very much the
position which the famous Campanile or detached Bell Tower of St. Mark
does with respect to the tangled group of hoary edifices around it.

Ere ascending, however, to gaze abroad upon the Encantadas, this
sea-tower itself claims attention. It is visible at the distance of
thirty miles; and, fully participating in that enchantment which
pervades the group, when first seen afar invariably is mistaken for a
sail. Four leagues away, of a golden, hazy noon, it seems some Spanish
Admiral's ship, stacked up with glittering canvas. Sail ho! Sail ho!
Sail ho! from all three masts. But coming nigh, the enchanted frigate
is transformed apace into a craggy keep.

My first visit to the spot was made in the gray of the morning. With a
view of fishing, we had lowered three boats and pulling some two miles
from our vessel, found ourselves just before dawn of day close under the
moon-shadow of Rodondo. Its aspect was heightened, and yet softened, by
the strange double twilight of the hour. The great full moon burnt in
the low west like a half-spent beacon, casting a soft mellow tinge upon
the sea like that cast by a waning fire of embers upon a midnight
hearth; while along the entire east the invisible sun sent pallid
intimations of his coming. The wind was light; the waves languid; the
stars twinkled with a faint effulgence; all nature seemed supine with
the long night watch, and half-suspended in jaded expectation of the
sun. This was the critical hour to catch Rodondo in his perfect mood.
The twilight was just enough to reveal every striking point, without
tearing away the dim investiture of wonder.

From a broken stair-like base, washed, as the steps of a water-palace,
by the waves, the tower rose in entablatures of strata to a shaven
summit. These uniform layers, which compose the mass, form its most
peculiar feature. For at their lines of junction they project flatly
into encircling shelves, from top to bottom, rising one above another in
graduated series. And as the eaves of any old barn or abbey are alive
with swallows, so were all these rocky ledges with unnumbered sea-fowl.
Eaves upon eaves, and nests upon nests. Here and there were long
birdlime streaks of a ghostly white staining the tower from sea to air,
readily accounting for its sail-like look afar. All would have been
bewitchingly quiescent, were it not for the demoniac din created by the
birds. Not only were the eaves rustling with them, but they flew densely
overhead, spreading themselves into a winged and continually shifting
canopy. The tower is the resort of aquatic birds for hundreds of leagues
around. To the north, to the east, to the west, stretches nothing but
eternal ocean; so that the man-of-war hawk coming from the coasts of
North America, Polynesia, or Peru, makes his first land at Rodondo. And
yet though Rodondo be terra-firma, no land-bird ever lighted on it.
Fancy a red-robin or a canary there! What a falling into the hands of
the Philistines, when the poor warbler should be surrounded by such
locust-flights of strong bandit birds, with long bills cruel as daggers.

I know not where one can better study the Natural History of strange
sea-fowl than at Rodondo. It is the aviary of Ocean. Birds light here
which never touched mast or tree; hermit-birds, which ever fly alone;
cloud-birds, familiar with unpierced zones of air.

Let us first glance low down to the lowermost shelf of all, which is the
widest, too, and but a little space from high-water mark. What
outlandish beings are these? Erect as men, but hardly as symmetrical,
they stand all round the rock like sculptured caryatides, supporting the
next range of eaves above. Their bodies are grotesquely misshapen; their
bills short; their feet seemingly legless; while the members at their
sides are neither fin, wing, nor arm. And truly neither fish, flesh, nor
fowl is the penguin; as an edible, pertaining neither to Carnival nor
Lent; without exception the most ambiguous and least lovely creature yet
discovered by man. Though dabbling in all three elements, and indeed
possessing some rudimental claims to all, the penguin is at home in
none. On land it stumps; afloat it sculls; in the air it flops. As if
ashamed of her failure, Nature keeps this ungainly child hidden away at
the ends of the earth, in the Straits of Magellan, and on the abased
sea-story of Rodondo.

But look, what are yon wobegone regiments drawn up on the next shelf
above? what rank and file of large strange fowl? what sea Friars of
Orders Gray? Pelicans. Their elongated bills, and heavy leathern pouches
suspended thereto, give them the most lugubrious expression. A pensive
race, they stand for hours together without motion. Their dull, ashy
plumage imparts an aspect as if they had been powdered over with
cinders. A penitential bird, indeed, fitly haunting the shores of the
clinkered Encantadas, whereon tormented Job himself might have well sat
down and scraped himself with potsherds.

Higher up now we mark the gony, or gray albatross, anomalously so
called, an unsightly unpoetic bird, unlike its storied kinsman, which is
the snow-white ghost of the haunted Capes of Hope and Horn.

As we still ascend from shelf to shelf, we find the tenants of the tower
serially disposed in order of their magnitude:--gannets, black and
speckled haglets, jays, sea-hens, sperm-whale-birds, gulls of all
varieties:--thrones, princedoms, powers, dominating one above another in
senatorial array; while, sprinkled over all, like an ever-repeated fly
in a great piece of broidery, the stormy petrel or Mother Cary's chicken
sounds his continual challenge and alarm. That this mysterious
hummingbird of ocean--which, had it but brilliancy of hue, might, from
its evanescent liveliness, be almost called its butterfly, yet whose
chirrup under the stern is ominous to mariners as to the peasant the
death-tick sounding from behind the chimney jamb--should have its
special haunt at the Encantadas, contributes, in the seaman's mind, not
a little to their dreary spell.

As day advances the dissonant din augments. With ear-splitting cries the
wild birds celebrate their matins. Each moment, flights push from the
tower, and join the aerial choir hovering overhead, while their places
below are supplied by darting myriads. But down through all this discord
of commotion, I hear clear, silver, bugle-like notes unbrokenly falling,
like oblique lines of swift-slanting rain in a cascading shower. I gaze
far up, and behold a snow-white angelic thing, with one long, lance-like
feather thrust out behind. It is the bright, inspiriting chanticleer of
ocean, the beauteous bird, from its bestirring whistle of musical
invocation, fitly styled the "Boatswain's Mate."

The winged, life-clouding Rodondo had its full counterpart in the finny
hosts which peopled the waters at its base. Below the water-line, the
rock seemed one honey-comb of grottoes, affording labyrinthine
lurking-places for swarms of fairy fish. All were strange; many
exceedingly beautiful; and would have well graced the costliest glass
globes in which gold-fish are kept for a show. Nothing was more striking
than the complete novelty of many individuals of this multitude. Here
hues were seen as yet unpainted, and figures which are unengraved.

To show the multitude, avidity, and nameless fearlessness and tameness
of these fish, let me say, that often, marking through clear spaces of
water--temporarily made so by the concentric dartings of the fish above
the surface--certain larger and less unwary wights, which swam slow and
deep; our anglers would cautiously essay to drop their lines down to
these last. But in vain; there was no passing the uppermost zone. No
sooner did the hook touch the sea, than a hundred infatuates contended
for the honor of capture. Poor fish of Rodondo! in your victimized
confidence, you are of the number of those who inconsiderately trust,
while they do not understand, human nature.

But the dawn is now fairly day. Band after band, the sea-fowl sail away
to forage the deep for their food. The tower is left solitary save the
fish-caves at its base. Its birdlime gleams in the golden rays like the
whitewash of a tall light-house, or the lofty sails of a cruiser. This
moment, doubtless, while we know it to be a dead desert rock other
voyagers are taking oaths it is a glad populous ship.

But ropes now, and let us ascend. Yet soft, this is not so easy.

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 More Spenser. Go away Spenser. Melville talks about how cool towers are in general. Then he talks about a cool elevated Rock called Rock Redondo, or Round Rock. It's a round rock. You can climb up it and look out and see far away. But first the narrator goes back and describes the first time he came to the Rodondo. It was pretty. He says it's also a good place to see birds, like penguins and pelicans. And then there are lots of fish in the water roundabout, who are easy to catch since they haven't dealt with human beings much. And now up the rock.

