ways made him more god-like
because more man-like.

When darkness crept over the kitchen so that the hero could no longer be
seen properly, Annie went into the parlour and returned carrying the
elegant lamp, with its globe of frosted glass, that Vassie, when it was
lit, proceeded to cover with a sort of little cape of quilled pink paper
edged with flowers made of the same material. The room being thus too
dimmed for Annie's fancy, she tilted the shade to one side so that a
white fan of light threw itself upon Archelaus, making his tangled
beard and crisp hair gleam and showing the warm colour brimming in his
face up to the line of white across his untanned brow. So Ishmael saw
him as he rose and went out to cool his own heated cheeks upon the
cliff, and so he saw him as he lay in bed that night, flaring out in a
swimming round of light against the darkness.

CHAPTER V

LULL BEFORE STORM

There was a place upon the cliff which Ishmael had made peculiarly his,
where he went whenever he wished to be alone, which was not seldom. No
other place since that hollow where the favoured boys had been wont to
meet Hilaria had meant so much to him, and this one had the supreme
advantage that it belonged to him only. The rest of his family did not
indulge in cliff-climbing. Generally he was accompanied there by Wanda,
his big farm-dog, a jolly, rollicking, idiotically adoring creature who
spent her days wriggling and curvetting at his feet, her silly pink
tongue dabbing at him, her moist eyes beaming through her tangled
fringe. She was not very clever, being one of those amiable fool dogs
whose quality of heart is their chief recommendation, but she had a
certain wisdom of her own nevertheless.

Nowhere on all the coast was it possible to see a wider stretch of sky
than from this plateau half-way down the sloping turf-clad cliff. On
either side was ranked headland after headland, growing dimmer with the
soft bruised hue of distance, while the plateau itself was set in an
inward-curving stretch of cliff from which the whole line of the horizon
made a vast convexity. Sometimes Ishmael would lie upon his back and,
blotting the green protruding edge of the plateau from his mind, watch
only the sky and sea, where, such was their expanse, it was often
possible to glimpse three different weathers in one sweeping glance.
Away to the left, where, far out to sea, the Longships stuck a white
finger out of the foam, a sudden squall