As they moved on and the afternoon advanced, a large and striking change took place in the appearance of the scene. A narrow, clear-cut line of shadow made itself visible below the sand-dunes. The sky lost its metallic glitter and became a deep hyacinthine blue, a blue which after a while communicated itself, with hardly any change in its tint, to the wide-spread volume of water beneath it. In those spots where masses of seaweed floated beneath the surface, the omnipresent blue deepened to a rich indescribable purple, that amazing purple more frequent in southern than in northern seas, which we may suppose is indicated in the Homeric epithet “wine dark.”
As the friends approached the familiar environs of Rodmoor they suddenly came upon a fisherman’s boat pulled up upon the sand, with some heavy nets left lying beside it.
“Sorio!” cried the girl, stooping down and lifting the meshes of one of these, “Sorio! there’s something alive left here. Look!”
He bent over the net beside her and began hastily disentangling several little silvery fish which were struggling and flapping feebly and opening their tiny gills in labouring gasps.
“All right—all right!” cried the man, addressing in his excitement the tiny prisoners, “I’ll soon set you free.”
“What are you doing, Adrian?” expostulated the girl. “No—no! You mustn’t throw them back—you mustn’t! The children always come round when school’s over and search the nets. It’s a Rodmoor custom.”
“It’s a custom I’m going to break, then!” he shouted, rushing towards the sea with a handful of gasping little lives. His fingers when he returned, were covered with glittering scales but they did not outshine the gleam in his face.
“You should have seen them dash away,” he cried. “I’m glad those children won’t find them!”
“They’ll find others,” remarked Philippa Renshaw. “There’ll always be some nets that have fish left in them.”