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Rh across the dancing sunlight of the harbor to the black fir islands patched with snow. "Powerful callin'. The' 's lots o' clumsy beggars aboard o' bo'ts, too— Ye know Bunty, the roughest part is, I might jus' as well kep' the vessel, after all."

It was the first time that his friend had ever heard him speak bitterly.

  The swift invasion of winter had changed the cosy village, and the autumnal land whose Northern strength was more than beauty, into a huddling camp, a bare, angular outpost against cold desolation. The harbor lay dull and blackened, as though winter-killed; scattered islets shone like alabaster domes of drowned mausoleums; along the foreshore the wharves ran in bony snowbanks across gleaming slopes and valleys of thin, sallow ice, which, at the hidden work of tides in clear morning silences, surprised the bleak solitude with little, far-heard noises of straining, crashing, tinkling, as if invisible wanderers among the hummocks were to smash through 