There it rose against the seaward cliffs, the little tower of Trécourt farm, sea-smitten and crusted, wind-worn, stained, gray as the lichened rocks scattered across the moorland. Over it the white gulls pitched and tossed in a windy sky; beyond crawled the ancient and wrinkled sea.
“It is a strange thing,” I said aloud, “to find love at the world’s edge.” I looked blindly across the gray waste. “But I have found it too late.”
The wind blew furiously; I heard the gulls squealing in the sky, the far thunder of the surf.
Then, looking seaward again, for the first time I noticed that the black cruiser was gone, that nothing now lay between the cliffs and the hazy headland of Groix save a sheet of lonely water spreading league on league to meet a flat, gray sky.
Why had the cruiser sailed? As I stood there, brooding, to my numbed ears the moor-winds bore a sound coming from a great distance—the sound of cannon—little, soft reports, all but inaudible in the wind and the humming undertone of the breakers. Yet I knew the sound, and turned my unquiet eyes to the sea, where nothing moved save the far crests of waves.
For a while I stood listening, searching the sea, until a voice hailed me, and I turned to find Kelly Eyre almost at my elbow. 286
“There is a man in the village haranguing the people,” he said, abruptly. “We thought you ought to know.”
“A man haranguing the people,” I repeated. “What of it?”
“Speed thinks the man is Buckhurst.”
“What!” I cried.