A long-billed shore plover takes up the alarm, and blunderingly races
towards instead of from me, whimpering "plin, plin" as it passes and,
still curious though alert, steps and bobs and ducks--all its movements
and flight impulsive and staccato.

The grey mist whitens. A luminous patch indicates the east. The light
increases. The cumbersome vapour is sopped up by the sun, and the
coo-hooing of many pigeons makes proclamation of the day. Detached and
erratic patches of ripples appear--tiptoe touches of sportful elves
tripping from the isles to the continent, whisking merrily, the faintest
flicks of dainty toes making the glad sea to smile. Parcelled into
shadows, bold, yet retreating, the dimness of the night, purple on the
glistening sea, stretches from the isles towards the long, orange-tinted
beach.

Let there be no loitering of the shadows. The gloomy isles have changed
from black to purple and from purple to blue, and as the imperious sun
flashes on the mainland a smudge of brown, blurred and shifting, in the
far distance--the only evidence of the existence of human schemes and
agitations--the only stain on the celestial purity of the
morning--betokens the belated steamer for the coming of which the
joy-giving watches of the tropic night have been kept.




CHAPTER VIII