Page:Moonfleet - John Meade Falkner.pdf/276

 doing. The sea was running very high, but with the falling wind the waves came in more leisurely and with less of broken water, curling over in a tawny sweep and regular thunderous beat all along the bay for miles. There was no sign left of the hull of the Aurungzebe, but the beach was strewn with so much wreckage as one would have thought could never come from so small a ship. There were barrels and kegs, gratings and hatch-covers, booms and pieces of masts and trucks; and besides all that, the heaving water inshore was covered with a floating mask of broken matchwood, and the waves, as they curled over, carried up and dashed down on the pebbles planks and beams beyond number. There were a dozen or more of men on the seaward side of the beach, with oilskins to keep the wet out, prowling up and down the pebbles to see what they could lay their hands on; and now and then they would run down almost into the white fringe, risking their lives to save a keg as they had risked them to save their fellows last night—as they had risked their lives to save ours—as Elzevir had risked his life to save mine, and lost it there in the white fringe.

I sat down at the top of the beach, with elbows on knees, head between hands, and face set out to sea, not knowing well why I was there or what I sought, but only thinking that Elzevir was floating somewhere in that floating skin of wreckwood, and that I must be at hand to meet him when he came ashore. He would surely come in time, for I had seen others come ashore that way. For when the Bataviaman went on the beach, I stood as near her as our rescuers had stood to us last night, and there were some aboard who took