tremendous effort and rolled right over.


Chapter 1.VII.

The tide was out; the beach was deserted; lazily flopped the warm sea. The
sun beat down, beat down hot and fiery on the fine sand, baking the grey
and blue and black and white-veined pebbles. It sucked up the little drop
of water that lay in the hollow of the curved shells; it bleached the pink
convolvulus that threaded through and through the sand-hills. Nothing
seemed to move but the small sand-hoppers. Pit-pit-pit! They were never
still.

Over there on the weed-hung rocks that looked at low tide like shaggy
beasts come down to the water to drink, the sunlight seemed to spin like a
silver coin dropped into each of the small rock pools. They danced, they
quivered, and minute ripples laved the porous shores. Looking down,
bending over, each pool was like a lake with pink and blue houses
clustered on the shores; and oh! the vast mountainous country behind those
houses--the ravines, the passes, the dangerous creeks and fearful tracks
that led to the water's edge. Underneath waved the sea-forest--pink
thread-like trees, velvet anemones, and orange berry-spotted weeds. Now a
stone on the bottom moved, rocked, and there was a glimpse of a black
feeler; now a thread-like creature wavered by and was lost. Something was
happening to the pink, waving trees; they were changing to a cold moonlight
blue. And now there sounded the faintest "plop." Who made that sound?
What was going on down there? And how strong, how damp the seaweed smelt
in the hot sun...

The green blinds were drawn in the bungalows of the summer colony. Over