Snarleyyow by Frederick Marryat

We must now leave the cutter to return to Portsmouth, while we introduce to our readers a new and strange association. We stated that the boats had been ensconced in a very small cove at the back of the Isle of Wight. Above these hung the terrific cliff of the Black Gang Chyne, which, to all appearance, was inaccessible. But this was not the case, or the smugglers would not have resorted there to disembark their cargo. At that time, for since that period much of the cliff has fallen down, and the aspect is much changed, the rocks rose up from the water nearly perpendicularly, to the height of fifty or sixty feet. At that height there was a flat of about one hundred feet square in front of a cave of very great depth.

The flat, so called in contradistinction to the perpendicular cliff, descended from the seaward to the cave, so that the latter was not to be seen either by vessels passing by, or by those who might be adventurous enough to peep over the ridge above; and fragments of rocks, dispersed here and there on this flat, or platform, induced people to imagine that the upper cliff was a continuation of the lower.