ght shining
from all the Atlantic which stretched before us to America; and again
we turned to the coast, which was low and far beyond mounting seas. By
watching one mark ashore, a grey blur which was really the tower of a
familiar village church, it was clear Yeo was not making Pebblecombe
with any ease. I glanced at him, and he shook his head. He then nodded
it towards the western headland of the bay.

That was almost veiled by a dark curtain, though not long before the
partitioned fields and colours of its upper slopes were clear as a
mosaic; so insidiously, to the uninitiated, do the moods of this bay
change. Our lady was at this moment bending solicitously towards her
husband, whose head was in his hands. But he shook her off, turning
away with a face not quite so proud as it had been, for its complexion
had become that of a green canary's. He had acquired an expression of
holiness, contemplative and sorrowful. The western coast had
disappeared in the murk. "Better have something to eat now," said Yeo,
"while there's a chance."

The lady, after a hesitating glance at her husband, who made no sign,
his face being hidden in his arms, got out the luncheon-basket. He
looked up once with a face full of misery and reproach, and said,
forgetting the past with boldness, "Don't you think we'd better be
getting back? It's looking very dark over there."

Yeo munched with calm for a while, swallowed, and then remarked, while
conning the headland, "It'll be darker yet, and then we shan't go back,
because we can't."

The _Mona_ continuously soared upwards on the hills and sank again,
often trembling now, for the impact of the seas was sharper. The man
got into the bottom of the boat and groaned.

Light clouds, the feathery growth of the threatening obscurity which
had hidden the western land, first spread to dim the light of the sun,
then grew thick and dark overhead too, leaving us, after one ray that
sought us out again and at once died, in a chill gloom. The glassy seas
at once became opaque and bleak. Their surface was roughened with
gusts. The delicate colours of the world, its hopeful spaciousness, its
dancing light, the high blue vault, abruptly changed to the dim, cold,
restricted outlook of age. We waited.

As Yeo luffed the squall fell on us bodily with a great weight of wind
and white rain, pressing us into the sea. The _Mona_ made ineffective
leaps, trying to get release from her imprisonment, but only succeed