Page:Rideout--Beached keels.djvu/72

58 stood looking down the great sheer drop of shattered brown rock,—broken pillars of basalt, stained with orange, and rust, and deep green, and whitened with bird-droppings. From the foot of the cliffs and the little crescents of shingle beach below, the tide was ebbing away almost without a sound, it was so calm under the lee of the head. Helen tossed over a pebble, and a score of white gulls started up from among the rocks, to go wheeling from headland to headland, with peevish cries as of lonely wickedness. Amazingly high in the sunlight the big birds soared, with heads bent down; amazingly far beneath moved the sea,—endless, inward-toiling lines, rising away to the weary, straight, infinite circumscription of the horizon.

"It is beautiful," said he at last, "and unspeakably sad. One is very little—and yet glad to feel so."

"That was well added," said the girl thoughtfully. There was nothing further to be said.

Out here at the meeting of earth, air, and water, the wind seemed more cold, the sun-