“I don’t expect a landing-place on this coast, but I don’t see even the tumble-down sod hut your father talked about.”
The boat shot up out of a boiling hollow, and as it climbed the slippery back of a great wave, Hildegarde called out, “I see it!”
“The hut? Where?”
“All alone, over yonder. Just beyond those rocks. That’s where you and I will sit and wait, won’t we, Red? Those rocks are farther north than where the tents are shining—‘farther north,’ do you hear, Mr. Red?”
Beyond the chaos of boulders, in a cloud of spray, the boat was not so much beached as daringly run in and her passengers ejected, all in that breathless instant before the turbulent water withdrew, carrying out the clumsy craft as lightly as it would a cork. And now already the toiling sailors were some yards on their way back, disappearing round the point. Hildegarde was safe on a temporary perch, and Reddy much occupied in howling defiance at each thunderous onslaught of the surf. Cheviot, thinking to combine the girl’s appeal for “a good observatory” with his own notion of an easy niche safe beyond the tide’s reach, went to spy out the land over there where some mighty storm had piled the rocks. At sight of a man skulking among the boulders, Cheviot called out, “Hello!”
With a certain reluctance the bearded figure shuffled into fuller view. “Hello!” he said, without enthusiasm.
“Do you belong here?” he was asked.
“Sort o’.”
“Oh—a—anything doing?”