As the whaleboat proceeded northward and approached the big rock the currents became more vicious. They ripped and swirled and licked at the side of the sturdy vessel like the advance guard of Neptune’s forces defending the rock from the invaders. The men were bending to the oars now and grunting with each stroke, and Jack and Ray could see the muscles in their knotted arms stand out under the strain. Slowly but surely the boat drew nearer the tremendous boulder, and as the lads got a closer view of the pedestal on which the new lighthouse was to be erected they realized why Mr. Warner had cause to worry about the outcome of the expedition.
For fifty feet about the great chunk of granite the water fairly boiled with eddies and currents and the force of the heaving swells of the Atlantic. Here all these met and struggled for supremacy, and the ugly sides of Cobra Head were lashed and pounded by tons of water hurled against them. It seemed folly for a craft even as stanch as the big whaleboat to venture into that turmoil and dare the approach of the rock.
And to make the situation harder the head presented a grim and foreboding surface to the adventurers. Indeed, there did not appear to be a crack, or crevice into which the men could get a foothold when they attempted a landing, and if there really were any they were well covered with slippery brown rock weed and kelp that draped the sides of the massive stone. In truth, as Jack gazed upon the grim barrier, it looked to him like the great shaggy head of Medusa with her snaky locks tossed about in the hissing breakers. And the thunder of the tumbling water was almost deafening.
“Mighty ugly looking, isn’t it?” shouted Mr. Warner, for a shout was necessary to make his voice heard above the roar.
“I should say so,” cried the boys, trying to suppress their excitement.
Big O’Brien cupped one hand about his mouth and shouted to the boat crew:
“Row on, boys. Pull, an’ we’ll go ar-round t’ blitherin’ thing t’ see if ther-re be a place fer a fly t’ sthick on.” And the men bent to once more and urged the craft forward, keeping outside of the ring of troubled water as much as possible.
Slowly they made their way round the circle, the whaleboat pitching and rolling like a cork. Foot by foot they moved through the boiling, foam-flecked water and all the time Big O’Brien and Mr. Warner scanned the great granite crag for a place to attempt a landing.
And at last they found it. To be sure it was not much of a landing place, but then it was better than a sheer wall of granite covered with slippery kelp. On the ocean side where the great breakers dashed in with a roar the rock weed had been all torn away by the force of the water. Ages of erosion had worn soft spots in the granite away, too, until there remained a slopping trough into which the water dashed with a hiss and fountained twenty feet in the air.
The constant action on the sloping side had worn the hard stone as smooth as glass and the dashing of the wave plumes had pitted the rock here and there above, so that a man of great agility could hope to gain the top if he moved fast enough and could beat these curling tongues of water that shot against the rock and licked it clean.