“Oh, everything is topsy-turvy in these days! Never have I known all the boats to make for the shore in such fashion, unless a great storm was to windward, and yet now——”
She caught him by the arm suddenly after she had remained peering out to the southern horizon with an arched hand over her eyes.
“Look there—there!” she said in a whisper, pointing seaward. “Tell me what you see there. I misdoubt my own eyes. Is there a line of white just under the sky?”
He followed the direction of her finger. For some moments he failed to see anything out of the common; the sea horizon was somewhat blurred—that was all. But suddenly there came a gleam as of the sun quivering upon a thin sword blade of white steel out there—it quivered as might a feather in the wind.
“'Tis a white wave,” he said. “See, it has already widened. A great wave rolling shoreward.”
“List, list,” she whispered.
He put his hand behind his ear. There came through the air the hollow boom of distant thunder, or was it the breaking of a heavy sea upon a rocky coast? The sound of many waters came fitfully landward, and at the same moment a fierce gust of wind rushed over the water—they marked its footsteps—it was stamping with the hoofs of a war-horse on the surface of the deep as it charged down upon the coast.
Before the two persons on the cliff felt it on their faces, bending their bodies against its force, a wisp of mist had come over the sun. Far away there was a black cloud—small, but it looked to be dense as a cannon ball. She pointed it out, and these were her words:
“A cannon ball!—a cannon ball!”
The gust of wind had passed; they could hear the trees of the park complaining at first and then roaring, with the creaking of branches as it clove its way through them. Flocks of sea birds filled the air—all were flying inland. Their fitful cries came in all notes, from the plaintive whistle of the curlew and the hoarse shriek of the gull to the bass boom of a bittern.