Up and up breathlessly crept the light. On the patch of bracken in the hollow, rallying round a spur of rock, flying for a fresh stand across a shaly slope, so holding its own for an instant against a scarp, driven over the ledge! Ned's hand went out to touch it, but found it behind him; so, turning swiftly he saw the last flicker of sunlight resting, ere final flight, on a yellow placard--
"Ginger beer, 6d."
He started to his feet. "Damn it all!" he cried, "fancy finding that ultimate sixpence here!"
"Sixpence?" queried Ted, rousing himself from a day dream. "Ah! I was thinking of the hundred pounds you left over yonder. It really is d----d rot, you know. What's to hinder my claiming it--well--say to-morrow morning?"
"You've time now if you wish it," assented Ned, "and if the thunderstorm----"
As he spoke there came a quiver of light far out over the hidden sea. It seemed to come from below the threshold of the visible world, like the sudden gleams from the beyond, which, at times, irradiate the mind of man with some infinite message.
Ted turned round startled at the greyness that was fast settling down on hill and sky. "We had better get down as sharp as we can," he cried hastily, taking his bearings. "I think if we try to the left a little we shall get down the rocky part before dusk makes going difficult."
Once again, however, the short cut proved the longer way. The path grew more and more hopeless, until after scrambling down an almost precipitous corrie they found themselves brought up on a jutting spur, by a thirty feet drop as the only onward way.
"It's--it's----" muttered Ted, as he satisfied himself they must go back.
"Worth it," remarked Ned; for the jag of rock on which he stood overhung a wilderness of grey shadow and grey water; the grey hills watching the grey water recede from the shores, leaving behind it still greyer patches of sand that rose roundly from the level reaches of the ebbing tide.