say, with what wind we felt there, to be carrying his prescience
to bold lengths) and hauled the sail to its place. I went forward to
lower the centre keel as he came aft with the sheet in his hand. The
_Mona_ sidled away, stood out, and then reached for the distant
sandhills. The village diminished and concentrated under its hill.

When clear of the shelter of the hill, on the lee foot of which the
village shelters from the westerly winds, the _Mona_ went over suddenly
in a gust which put her gunwale in the wash and kept it there. The
dipper came adrift and rattled over. Yeo eased her a bit, and his
uncanny eyes never shifted from their fixed scrutiny ahead. Our
passenger laughed aloud, for his wife had grasped him at the unexpected
movement and the noise. "That's nothing," he assured her. "This is
fine."

We cleared the shallows and were in the channel where the weight of the
incoming tide raced and climbed. The _Mona's_ light bows, meeting the
tide, danced ecstatically, sending over us showers which caught in the
foot of the sail. The weather in the open was bright and hard, and the
sun lost a little of its warmth in the wind, which was north of west.
The dunes, which had been evanescent through distance in the wind and
light, grew material and great. The combers, breaking diagonally along
that forsaken beach, had something ominous to say of the bar. Even I
knew that, and turned to look ahead. Out there, across and above the
burnished sea, a regular series of long shadowy walls were forming.
They advanced slowly, grew darker, and grew higher; then in their
parapets appeared arcs of white, and at once, where those lines of
sombre shadows had been, there were plunging strata of white clouds.
Other dark bands advanced from seaward continuously. There was a tremor
and sound as of the shock and roll of far thunder.

We went about again, steering for the first outward mark of the
fairway, the Mullet Buoy. Only the last house of the village was now
looking at us remotely, a tiny white cube which frequently sank, on its
precarious ledge of earth, beneath an intervening upheaval of the
waters. The sea was superior now, as we saw the world from our little
boat. The waters moved in from the outer with the ease of certain
conquest, and the foundering shores vanished under each uplifted send
of the ocean. We rounded the buoy. I could see the tide holding it down
aslant with heavy strands of water, stretched and taut. About we