Gripping himself together, every hair alert, he ran.
He was nearly across the sward now. Tall grass-blades pricked sparsely through the sand. The shingle-bank, roan against the sparkle of the sea, surged before him, and behind it—what?
He was living in his eyes.
The knoll lay now to his right rear. Behind it, across the creek, rose the Wish; and on the crest a Grenadier gazing seawards.
Opposite the little hill, standing on the bank somewhere just above the entrance to the sluice, stood the Gentleman.
II
Kit dropped to his hands and knees.
The other had not seen him: for he was standing, back turned, and a short black-snouted pistol in the hand behind him; directing operations in the creek.
What did it all mean? what was that banging and business in the creek?
It was to find this out that he had come.