When he set out from the Hartwells' house the grey sea-mist, which had been rolling round the coast and through the valley of the Lana for several days past, was as thick as a fog. It was dense and confusing to one who faced it for the first time. It was so finely grey that one seemed to see through it at first, and boldly plunged into its depths; but the instant that one did so, its folds closed over one as the dense waters of the sea do over a diver, and one was lost. Before one had recovered, one had the feeling of being smothered in a billow of grey gauze, smooth as silk that has been dipped in milk, and gasped within the windings of its folds. It was chilly, with the taste of the salt sea in its moisture. It took the heart out of one.
“This is nothing, sir,” said Mr. Hartwell. “Lay your hand upon my arm and you will have no trouble: I could find my way along our cliffs through the thickest weather. I have been put to the test before now.”
“I am not thinking so much of ourselves as of our friends whom we expect to meet us in the valley,” said Wesley. “How, think you, will they be able to find their way under such conditions?”
“I do not assume that this mist is more than a temporary thing—it comes from the sea well-nigh every Summer morn, but perishes as it rolls over the cliffs,” said Mr. Hartwell.
“It was clinging to the ridges of the valley slopes when I rode through, almost at noon yesterday,” said Wesley.
“Stragglers from the general army that we have to encounter here,” said the other. “When the phalanx of sea-mist rolls inland, it leaves its tattered remnants of camp followers straggling in its wake. I believe that when we reach the place we shall find ourselves bathed in sunshine.”
“May your surmise prove correct!” said Wesley.
And so they started breaking into the mist, feeling its salt touch upon their faces and hearing the sound of the waves breaking on the beach below them. It was curiously hollow, and every now and then amid the noise of the nearer waves, there came the deep boom from the distant caves, and the sob of the waters that were choked in the narrow passage between the cliffs and the shoreward limits of the Dog's Teeth.
They had not gone more than half a mile along the track that led to the pack horse road, when they heard the sound of voices, near at hand, with a faint and still fainter far-off hail. The next moment they almost ran into a mixed party of travellers on the same track.
Mr. Hartwell was acquainted with some of them. They came from a hamlet high up in the valley a mile from Ruthallion.