or minted gold. But as soon as I trod the good earth again, and
had covered my nakedness against the sun, I knelt down over against the
ruins of the brig, and out of the fulness of my heart prayed long and
passionately for all poor souls upon the sea. A generous prayer is never
presented in vain; the petition may be refused, but the petitioner is
always, I believe, rewarded by some gracious visitation. The horror, at
least, was lifted from my mind; I could look with calm of spirit on that
great bright creature, God's ocean; and as I set off homeward up the
rough sides of Aros, nothing remained of my concern beyond a deep
determination to meddle no more with the spoils of wrecked vessels or the
treasures of the dead.

I was already some way up the hill before I paused to breathe and look
behind me. The sight that met my eyes was doubly strange.

For, first, the storm that I had foreseen was now advancing with almost
tropical rapidity. The whole surface of the sea had been dulled from its
conspicuous brightness to an ugly hue of corrugated lead; already in the
distance the white waves, the 'skipper's daughters,' had begun to flee
before a breeze that was still insensible on Aros; and already along the
curve of Sandag Bay there was a splashing run of sea that I could hear
from where I stood. The change upon the sky was even more remarkable.
There had begun to arise out of the south-west a huge and solid continent
of scowling cloud; here and there, through rents in its contexture, the
sun still poured a sheaf of spreading rays; and here and there, from all
its edges, vast inky streamers lay forth along the yet unclouded sky. The
menace was express and imminent. Even as I gazed, the sun was blotted
out. At any moment the tempest might fall upon Aros in its might.

The suddenness of this change of weather so fixed my eyes on heaven that
it was some seconds before they alighted on the bay, mapped out below my
feet, and robbed a moment later of the sun. The knoll which I had just
surmounted overflanked a little amphitheatre of lower hillocks sloping
towards the sea, and beyond that the yellow arc of beach and the whole
extent of Sandag Bay. It was a scene on which I had often looked down,
but where I had never before beheld a human figure. I had but just
turned my back upon it and left it empty, and my wonder may be fancied
when I saw a boat and several men in that deserted spot. The boat was
lying by the rocks.