"Why should I? Useless waste of money. I remembered your telling me once that you never went for your holiday without taking your clubs. We shall have grand sport."
He laughed quite boisterously, and a man who was passing through the hall looked at me and smiled. I recollected that smile afterward, but took little notice of it just then, because Zena was coming down the stairs.
Before dinner that evening it blew a gale, and from windows overlooking the deserted parade we watched a sullen, angry sea pounding the sandy shore and hissing into long lines of foam, which the wind caught up and carried viciously inland.
"Isn't that a sail—a yacht?" said Zena suddenly, pointing out to sea, over which darkness was gathering like a pall.
It was, and those on board of her must be having a bad time, not to say a perilous one. She was certainly not built for such weather as this, but she must be a stout little craft to stand it as she did, and they were no fools who had the handling of her.
"Blown right out of her course, I should think," said Quarles. "The yachts shelter in the creek to the south yonder. I should not wonder if that boat hopes to make the creek which lies on the other side of the golf course."
"She's more likely to come ashore," said a man standing behind us, and he spoke with the air of an expert in such matters. "There's no anchorage in that creek, and, besides, a bar of mud lies right across the mouth of it."
As the curved line of the sea front presently hid the yacht from our view the gong sounded for dinner—a very welcome sound, and I, for one, thought no more about the yacht that night.
Before morning the gale had subsided, but the day was sullen and cloudy, threatening rain, and we did not attempt golf until after lunch.
It was an eighteen-hole course, and might be reckoned sporting, but it was not ideal. There was too much loose sand, and a great quantity of that rank grass which flourishes on sand dunes. It said much for the management that the greens were as good as they were.