The Measure of a Man
I
The light shore breeze of a September morning was dying out across the bay. The wide Atlantic beyond it seemed flat as a floor of sapphire inlaid with pale veins of green. The sky was without a cloud; and the sun filled the unstirred silence with a clear golden heat.
The high gray cliffs that held the bay, hid, at either end, the land beyond it; half hid even, by a curve of their contour, the entrance to Ballindra River, so that no sign of habitation was to be seen along the shore.
The blue spaces of the sea were empty, save for a little lug-rigged boat which had slipped out of the river while the mists still slept upon it, and had spent the morning creeping with each soft breath of air to the northern border of the bay.
It was now close to land, so close that the object of its journey could be plainly seen.
Before it, cradled, under the cliffs, between the serried ledges of rock, was a tiny beach.
It was in shape like a young moon, paved in silvery pink and pearl by milk-white pebbles and delicate shells, with shelving wings of stone thrust out and bent inward from either side into the sea.
The long ledges of rock were of a dark lavender, and from them a brilliant yellow weed dripped and swung in the transparent pool of purple and emerald, which throbbed softly against the pearly crescent of the shore.