From the fact that the cliff formed the inner face of the segment of a huge cylinder,having the sky for a top and the sea for a bottom,which enclosed the cove to the extent of more than a semicircle,he could see the vertical face curving round on each side of him.He looked far down the facade,and realized more thoroughly how it threatened him.Grimness was in every feature,and to its very bowels the inimical shape was desolation.
By one of those familiar conjunctions of things wherewith the inanimate world baits the mind of man when he pauses in moments of suspense,opposite Knights eyes was an imbedded fossil,standing forth in low relief from the rock.It was a creature with eyes.
The eyes,dead and turned to stone,were even now regarding him.
It was one of the early crustaceans called Trilobites.Separated by millions of years in their lives,Knight and this underling seemed to have met in their death.It was the single instance within reach of his vision of anything that had ever been alive and had had a body to save,as he himself had now.
The creature represented but a low type of animal existence,for never in their vernal years had the plains indicated by those numberless slaty layers been traversed by an intelligence worthy of the name.Zoophytes,mollusca,shell-fish,were the highest developments of those ancient dates.The immense lapses of time each formation represented had known nothing of the dignity of man.They were grand times,but they were mean times too,and mean were their relics.He was to be with the small in his death.
Knight was a geologist;and such is the supremacy of habit over occasion,as a pioneer of the thoughts of men,that at this dreadful juncture his mind found time to take in,by a momentary sweep,the varied scenes that had had their day between this creatures epoch and his own.There is no place like a cleft landscape for bringing home such imaginings as these.