There wasn’t a soul in sight; nothing but those white- and red-winged boats, making a lazy headway with the tide, to remind him of his fellow mortals, and they but added to the beauty of the picture. The water broke in baby waves on the shore, with the faintest musical ripple. Sea-gulls dipped to the shining surface, or floated smoothly in the blueness above. Now and again a cormorant flew, black and long-necked across the water.
Some half-hour or so Corin sat there, basking and dreaming in the sun, thinking, you may be pretty certain, of nothing, or at all events with thoughts too diffused to be worthy of the name.
And then, all at once, the antics of two birds roused him to sudden interest. Gulls, he would have called them, yet assuredly their manners were perplexing. Winging rapidly for a moment or so, they dropped suddenly like stones to the water. Up again, they repeated the manœuvre, and again, and yet again.
“Now what,” remarked Corin aloud, addressing the apparent solitude, “do those things call themselves?”
“They,” said a voice behind him, “are gannets.”
Corin turned.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
CONCERNING AN ARGUMENT
Seated on a rock, some half-dozen yards or so in his rear, was David Delancey, calmly gazing out to sea.
“How long have you been there?” demanded an astonished Corin.
“Oh, twenty minutes or thereabouts,” returned David. He got up from the rock and came to seat himself nearer Corin. “I thought you were dozing.”