'Your wedding dress, Sarah! And for me!' As he drew back to admire her
she looked up saucily, and said to him--

'Perhaps not for you. There is more than a week yet for Abel!' and then
cried out in dismay, for with a wild gesture and a fierce oath Eric
dashed out of the house, banging the door behind him. The incident
disturbed Sarah more than she could have thought possible, for it awoke
all her fears and doubts and indecision afresh. She cried a little, and
put by her dress, and to soothe herself went out to sit for a while on
the summit of the Flagstaff Rock. When she arrived she found there a
little group anxiously discussing the weather. The sea was calm and the
sun bright, but across the sea were strange lines of darkness and light,
and close in to shore the rocks were fringed with foam, which spread out
in great white curves and circles as the currents drifted. The wind had
backed, and came in sharp, cold puffs. The blow-hole, which ran under
the Flagstaff Rock, from the rocky bay without to the harbour within,
was booming at intervals, and the seagulls were screaming ceaselessly as
they wheeled about the entrance of the port.

'It looks bad,' she heard an old fisherman say to the coastguard. 'I
seen it just like this once before, when the East Indiaman _Coromandel_
went to pieces in Dizzard Bay!' Sarah did not wait to hear more. She was
of a timid nature where danger was concerned, and could not bear to hear
of wrecks and disasters. She went home and resumed the completion of her
dress, secretly determined to appease Eric when she should meet him with
a sweet apology--and to take the earliest opportunity of being even with
him after her marriage. The old fisherman's weather prophecy was
justified. That night at dusk a wild storm came on. The sea rose and
lashed the western coasts from Skye to Scilly and left a tale of