k; as I remember because my Master was just then
settled to dinner. But he rose at once and gave word to saddle in
haste, at the same time bidding me make ready to ride with him, and
fifteen others.

So we set forth and rode--the wind lulling, but the rain coming down
steadily--and reached Gunwallo Cove with a little daylight to spare.
On the beach there we found most of the foreigners landed, but seven of
them laid out starkly, who had been drowned or brought ashore dead
(for the yard had fallen on board, the day before, and no time left in
the ship's extremity to bury them): and three as good as dead--among
whom was Master Porson, with a great wound of the scalp; also everywhere
great piles of freight, chests, bales, and casks--a few staved and
taking damage from salt water and rain, but the most in apparent good
condition. The crew had worked very busily at the salving, and to the
great credit of men who had come through suffering and peril of death.
Mr. Saint Aubyn's band, too, had lent help, though by this time the
flowing of the tide forced them to give over. But the master (as one
might say) of their endeavours was neither the Portuguese captain nor
Mr. Saint Aubyn, but a young damsel whom I must describe more
particularly.

She was standing, as we rode down the beach, nigh to the water's edge;
with a group of men about her, and Mr. Saint Aubyn himself listening to
her orders. I can see her now as she turned at our approaching and she
and my Master looked for the first time into each other's eyes, which
afterwards were to look so often and fondly. In age she appeared
eighteen or twenty; her shape a mere girl's, but her face somewhat
older, being pinched and peaked by the cold, yet the loveliest I have
ever seen or shall see. Her hair, which seemed of a copper red,
darkened by rain, was blown about her shoulders, and her drenched blue
gown, hitched at the waist with a snakeskin girdle, flapped about her as
she turned to one or the other, using more play of hands than our
home-bred ladies do. Her feet were bare and rosy; ruddied doubtless, by
the wind and brine, but I think partly also by the angry light of the
sunsetting which broke the weather to seaward and turned the pools and
the wetted sand to the colour of blood. A hound kept beside her,
shivering and now and then lowering his muzzle to sniff the oreweed, as
if the brine of it puzzled him: a beast in shape somewhat like our
grey-hounds, but longer