All the coast to the east of the little harbour was rock, bold and
high, of a grey and brown hard stone, which after a mighty sweep,
shot out northward, and closed in the bay on that side with a
second great promontory. The long curved strip of sand on the west,
reaching to the promontory of Scaurnose, was the only open portion
of the coast for miles. Here the coasting vessel gliding past gained a
pleasant peep of open fields, belts of wood and farm houses, with
now and then a glimpse of a great house amidst its trees. In the
distance one or two bare solitary hills, imposing in aspect only
from their desolation, for their form gave no effect to their
altitude, rose to the height of over a thousand feet.

On this comparatively level part of the shore, parallel with its
line, and at some distance beyond the usual high water mark, the
waves of ten thousand northern storms had cast up a long dune or
bank of sand, terminating towards the west within a few yards of
a huge solitary rock of the ugly kind called conglomerate, which
must have been separated from the roots of the promontory by the
rush of waters at unusually high tides, for in winter they still
sometimes rounded the rock, and running down behind the dune,
turned it into a long island. The sand on the inland side of the
dune, covered with short sweet grass, browsed on by sheep, and with
the largest and reddest of daisies, was thus occasionally swept by
wild salt waves, and at times, when the northern wind blew straight
as an arrow and keen as a sword from the regions of endless snow,
lay under a sheet of gleaming ice.

The sun had been up for some time in a cloudless sky. The wind had
changed to the south, and wafted soft country odours to the shore,