t
forward the token of his coming, in the smooth ground-swell which was
heard inland, two miles away. To-morrow the pebbles, which were now
rattling down with each retreating wave, might be leaping to the ridge
top, and hurled like round-shot far ashore upon the marsh by the
force of the advancing wave, fleeing before the wrath of the western
hurricane.

"God help my boy!" said Mrs. Leigh again.

"God is as near him by sea as by land," said good Sir Richard.

"True, but I am a lone mother; and one that has no heart just now but to
go home and pray."

And so Mrs. Leigh went onward up the lane, and spent all that night in
listening between her prayers to the thunder of the surge, till it was
drowned, long ere the sun rose, in the thunder of the storm.

And where is Amyas on this same Christmas afternoon?

Amyas is sitting bareheaded in a boat's stern in Smerwick bay, with the
spray whistling through his curls, as he shouts cheerfully--

"Pull, and with a will, my merry men all, and never mind shipping a sea.
Cannon balls are a cargo that don't spoil by taking salt-water."

His mother's presage has been true enough. Christmas eve has been the
last of the still, dark, steaming nights of the early winter; and the
western gale has been roaring for the last twelve hours upon the Irish
coast.

The short light of the winter day is fading fast. Behind him is a
leaping line of billows lashed into mist by the tempest. Beside him
green foam-fringed columns are rushing up the black rocks, and falling
again in a thousand cataracts of snow. Before him is the deep and
sheltered bay: but it is not far up the bay that he and his can see; for
some four miles out at sea begins a sloping roof of thick gray cloud,
which stretches over their heads, and up and far away inland, cutting
the cliffs off at mid-height, hiding all the Kerry mountains, and
darkening the hollows of the distant firths into the blackness of night.
And underneath that awful roof of whirling mist the storm is howling
inland ever, sweeping before it the great foam-sponges, and the gray
salt spray, till all the land is hazy, dim, and dun. Let it howl on! for
there is more mist than ever salt spray made, flying before that gale;
more thunder than ever sea-surge wakened echoing among the cliffs of
Smerwick bay; along those sand-hills flash in the evening gloom red
sparks which never came from heaven; for that fort, now christened by
the invaders the Fort Del Oro, wh