emums, of every colour in the rainbow save blue. She gave a
cry of pleasure: "What are they, Doctor? What do you call them?"

"Sea anemones, in English, I believe," said the Doctor, "actinias,
serpulas, and sabellas. You may see something like that on the European
coasts, on a small scale, but there is nothing I ever have seen like
that great crimson fellow with cream-coloured tentacles. I do not know
his name. I suspect he has never been described. The common European
anemone they call 'crassicornis' is something like him, but not half as
fine."

"Is there any means of gathering and keeping them, Doctor?" asked Sam.
"We have no flowers in the garden like them."

"No possible means," said the Doctor. "They are but lumps of jelly. Let
us come away and get round the headland before the tide comes in."

They wandered on from cove to cove, under the dark cliffs, till
rounding a little headland the Doctor called out,--

"Here is something in your Cornish style, Halbert."

A thin wall of granite, like a vast buttress, ran into the sea, pierced
by a great arch, some sixty feet high. Aloft all sharp grey stone:
below, wherever the salt water had reached, a mass of dark clinging
weed: while beyond, as though set in a dark frame, was a soft glimpse
of blue sky and snow-white seabirds.

"There is nothing so grand as that in Cornwall, Doctor," said Halbert.

"Can we pass under it, Mr. Barker?" said Alice. "I should like to go
through; we have been into none of the caves yet."

"Oh, yes!" said George Barker. "You may go through for the next two
hours. The tide has not turned yet."

"I'll volunteer first," said the Doctor, "and if there's anything worth
seeing beyond, I'll come for you."

It was, as I said, a thin wall of granite, which ran out from the rest
of the hill, seaward, and was pierced by a tall arch; the blocks which
had formerly filled the void now lay weed-grown, half buried in sand,
forming a slippery threshold. Over these the Doctor climbed and looked
beyond.

A little sandy cove, reef-bound, like those they had seen before, lay
under the dark cliffs; and on a water-washed rock, not a hundred yards
from him, stood the man they had seen on the downs above, looking
steadily seaward.

The Doctor slipped over the rocks like an otter, and approached the man
across the smooth sand, unheard in the thunder of the surf. When he was
close upon him, the stranger turned, and the Doctor uttered a low cry
of wonder a