CHAPTER VII.
"A SEA CHANGE."
In the procession of the swift-winged hours there is for every man one and another which is big with fate, in that they bring him peculiar opportunity to lose his life, and by that means find it. Such an hour came now to Caius. The losing and finding of life is accomplished in many ways: the first proffer of this kind which Time makes to us is commonly a draught of the wine of joy, and happy is he who loses the remembrance of self therein.
The hour which was so fateful for Caius came flying with the light winds of August, which breathed over the sunny harvest fields and under the deep dark shade of woods of fir and beech, waving the gray moss that hung from trunk and branch, tossing the emerald ferns that grew in the moss at the roots, and out again into light to catch the silver down of thistles that grew by the red roadside and rustle their purple bloom; then on the cliff, just touching the blue sea with the slightest ripple, and losing themselves where sky and ocean met in indistinguishable azure fold.
Through the woods walked Caius, and onward to the shore. Neddy Morrison was dead. The little child who was lost in the sea was almost forgotten. Caius, thinking upon these things, thought also upon the transient nature of all things, but he did not think profoundly or long. In his earlier youth he had been a good deal given to meditation, a habit which is frequently a mere sign of mental fallowness; now that his mind was wearied with the accumulation of a little learning, it knew what work meant, and did not work except when compelled. Caius walked upon the red road bordered by fir hedges and weeds, amongst which blue and yellow asters were beginning to blow, and the ashen seeds of the flame-flower were seen, for its flame was blown out. Caius was walking for the sake of walking and in pure idleness, but when he came near Farmer Day's land he had no thought of passing it without pausing to rest his eyes for a time upon the familiar details of that part of the shore.
He scrambled down the face of the cliff, for it was as yet some hours before the tide would be full. A glance showed him that the stone of baby Day's tablet yet held firm, cemented in the niche of the soft rock. A glance was enough for an object for which he had little respect, and he sat down with his back to it on one of the smaller rocks of the beach. This was the only place on the shore where the sandstone was hard enough to retain the form of rock, and the rock ended in the small, sharp headland which, when he was down at the water's level, hid the neighbouring bay entirely from his sight.
The incoming tide had no swift, unexpected current as the outgoing water had. There was not much movement in the little channel upon which Caius was keeping watch. The summer afternoon was all aglow upon shore and sea. He had sat quite still for a good while, when, near the sunny island, just at the point where he had been pulled ashore on the adventurous night when he risked his life for the child, he suddenly observed what appeared to be a curious animal in the water.
There was a glistening as of a scaly, brownish body, which lay near the surface of the waves. Was it a porpoise that had ventured so near? Was it a dog swimming? No, he knew well that neither the one nor the other had any such habit as this lazy basking in sunny shallows. Then the head that was lying backwards on the water turned towards him, and he saw a human face—surely, surely it was human!—and a snow-white arm was lifted out of the water as if to play awhile in the warm air.