Gheena begged Crabbit to let rabbits sleep, and swung down on to the beach; she could see the lights of a ship at the quay, one which came in a few times a year with supplies for the villagers. Someone was pushing a boat off; she heard the scrape on the shingle.
Crabbit resented the intrusion on his foreshore, and a man's voice, sounding uneasily, told him to go home. A stone whizzed, its impact changing the red dog's note to one of such swift anger that Gheena could see someone leaping for sanctuary into the boat.
"It is Miss Gheena. Call him off, Miss; he'll ate us."
The moon chose this moment to illuminate the shore, and to show one man just scuffling over the side of the boat, and a second ensconcing himself behind some barrels.
"If you hadn't thrown rocks at him, Tom Guinane," said Gheena angrily, "he wouldn't get cross."
Tom Guinane, visibly nervous, swore by the God above him that it was but a handful of shingle that wouldn't crush a sherrimp, an' only thrun funnin', he not bein' sure whose dog it was.
Crabbit came to heel, master of the situation, with one white tooth bared for inspection, and Gheena watched the loading of the boat.
"Bits of flour an' things," Guinane told her, "for the shop outside, an' cruel dear now, Miss, thanks to the war. Not havin' much time in the light since I went to Mrs. Weston, I must do me work be night."
He spoke ill-humouredly, with a perpetual note of being wronged by life.
The boat was pushed off, passing from inertness to life as she swam in the shallow water. Gheena could see an array of barrels standing on a rock, waiting to be loaded. She climbed the cliff path to Seaview with the ease of good wind and practice, to find the three waiting for her at the card-table, and Mrs. Weston's old Swiss nurse just going out to meet her.