There is a tiny figure, right on the cliffslope’s edge, like a sock puppet to the theatre of the open sea.
His shoulders are bunched and his head is lowered. There’s a trail of smashed briars and gorse running across the slope in a straight line, from the spot where the tiny figure is hunching, into the water. And he is looking down as though he is waiting for something to rise from there.
The tide is high.
He can see a gallon drum, a plastic bottle. He can see a lobster buoy nodding in time with the waves, tussling against its anchoring pot. But he can’t see a fleet of by-the-wind sailors which has just been disbanded by a mighty disturbance. Now they are struggling to regroup, and he cannot see because they are too small, too blue, too scattered. And he can’t see the conger eels several feet below the surface either. Unseen they are nibbling, nibbling, nibbling.
Now he turns his head to look to the fields. He stares at the telegraph poles and firs and hedges, as though he is learning the horizon off by heart, as though he is listening very carefully.
Now a bird scaring machine fires its thunder clap into the sky. And all the crows and gulls and starlings, all the cormorants out on cormorant island ascend flapping and soaring in perfect synchronicity. And the tiny figure on the cliffslope’s edge ceases his waiting and springs to his paws and sets off at a sprint.
He is running, running, running.
He is One Eye.
He is on his way.