d silver over the moaning sea,
when the battered boat that had rolled and drifted almost aimlessly all
night, came within sight of land, though of land which looked almost
as lost and savage as the waves. All night there had been but little
lifting in the leaden sea, only now and then the boat had been heaved
up, as on a huge shoulder which slipped from under it; such occasional
sea-quakes came probably from the swell of some steamer that had passed
it in the dark; otherwise the waves were harmless though restless. But
it was piercingly cold, and there was, from time to time, a splutter of
rain like the splutter of the spray, which seemed almost to freeze as
it fell. MacIan, more at home than his companion in this quite barbarous
and elemental sort of adventure, had rowed toilsomely with the heavy
oars whenever he saw anything that looked like land; but for the most
part had trusted with grim transcendentalism to wind and tide. Among the
implements of their first outfit the brandy alone had remained to him,
and he gave it to his freezing companion in quantities which greatly
alarmed that temperate Londoner; but MacIan came from the cold seas and
mists where a man can drink a tumbler of raw whisky in a boat without it
making him wink.

When the Highlander began to pull really hard upon the oars, Turnbull
craned his dripping red head out of the boat to see the goal of his
exertions. It was a sufficiently uninviting one; nothing so far as could
be seen but a steep and shelving bank of shingle, made of loose little
pebbles such as children like, but slanting up higher than a house. On
the top of the mound, against the sky line, stood up the brown skeleton
of some broken fence or breakwater. With the grey and watery dawn
crawling up behind it, the fence really seemed to say to our philosophic
adventurers that they had come at last to the other end of nowhere.

Bent by necessity to his labour, MacIan managed the heavy boat with real
power and skill, and when at length he ran it up on a smoother part of
the slope it caught and held so that they could clamber out, not sinking
farther than their knees into the water and the shingle. A foot or
two farther up their feet found the beach firmer, and a few moments
afterwards they were leaning on the ragged breakwater and looking back
at the sea they had escaped.

They had a dreary walk across wastes of grey shingle in the grey dawn
before they began to come within hail of human fie