He realized at once that she had not heard him. She was listening instead for some sound that must come from far away.
Without willing it, he also listened; heard it, too, a long, deep, long-drawn sigh. No human sigh was this, but the sigh of great waters. He heard it again and yet again.
“It is as if Father Superior were waking from his sleep,” the girl whispered. “It tells of a coming storm. We must not go. We must wait.”
They had not long to wait. As the water took on the faint pink of dawn a mist appeared to rise from afar and to steal upon them.
One by one the distant points of land became misty suggestions, mere ghosts of earth. Like ten thousand great white fish leaping in the sea, two miles away white-caps appeared, while in the foreground with the gray-black sky as a reflecting mirror, the water took on a startling clearness.
Gulls ceased to soar and scream. Settling upon a rocky ledge, they stood erect, silent, like uniformed officers observing the outcome of a battle. From time to time a member of the party, some aid-de-camp, came soaring in to report the results of his observation.
And all the time ten thousand spots of gleaming white advanced. Now they were two miles away, a mile and a half, a mile, half a mile. Like some dirigible swept from its mooring, a fragment of cloud detached itself from the vast mass and came sweeping over. It left in its wake a disturbing chill.
And now the spots of white lay before them, at their very feet. A burst of wind swept the hair back from the girl’s temples. The wind increased in volume. Waves began beating at the rocks. A few large rain drops spattered.
And then, with a suddenness that was startling, the storm broke. Rain came down in torrents. Wind twisted at the birches, and set all the spruces whispering and sighing. The ever-increasing roar of water on the rocks vied with the din of crashing thunder. The sky, laced and interlaced by lightning, revealed itself as some vast shroud. There are no storms like the storms of November.
But even the fury of nature is futile. Men do not agree upon man’s destiny. No more does nature agree upon its own. Rain beating upon the water subdued it. White water vanished. The beating of waves subsided. Having outdone itself, in its mad fury, the wind swept the clouds to other lands and other waters. A brief half hour and a scene of surpassing beauty, a tiny world studded with diamonds lay before the waiting pair.