At that moment the faint light of evening broke through the clouds and Admonition saw the Union Jack at the mast-head.
'He is right. There is audacity! Run, Tim, haul it down, and bring it me. It shall go into the kitchen fire to boil the water for a glass of grog.'
CHAPTER XIV.
ON THE BURNT HILL.
It was Christmas Eve. A hard frost had set in. The leaves which had hung on the thorn trees on the Ray rained off and were whirled away by the wind and scattered over the rising and falling waters in the Rhyn. On the saltings were many pools, filled from below, through crab burrows, from the channels; when the tide mounted, the water squirted up through these passages and brimmed the pools, and when the tide fell, it was sucked down through them as if running out of a colander. Now a thin film of ice was formed about the edges of these pondlets, and the marsh herbs that dipped in them were encased in crystal. The wild geese and ducks came in multitudes, and dappled the water of Mersea channel.
'There's four gone,' said Abraham Dowsing in a sulky voice to Mehalah.
'Four what?'
'Four ewes to be sure, of what else have we more than one?'
'Where are they?'
'That is what I should like to know. Two went yesterday, but I said nothing about it, as I thought they might be found, or that I hadn't counted aright; but there's two more missing to-day.'