He was occupied until the launch returned and he went ashore again. The tide had risen and the surf was worse, but they got another load. The launch came back half-swamped with the men exhausted and a broken oar, and on her next voyage the crew kept her off the beach until the tide fell. While she rolled and plunged at anchor Kit lay in her bottom and watched the angry combers crash upon the beach.
They brought off the last few animals in the dark and Kit washed away the sand and salt. Three or four dark bruises marked his skin, his hands were blistered and he limped because a camel had stepped upon his foot. All the same, when he put on soft clean clothes he was satisfied. _Mossamedes_ would go to sea at daybreak and it was something to know the job was done.
The veranda was shady, and Kit sat on the top step in the cool breeze that blew between the posts. Olivia occupied a basket-chair farther back; her pose was languidly graceful and sometimes she smiled. It was not for nothing she had put on clothes she liked the best of all she had, but she thought she knew why Kit for the most part looked at the town and not at her. Sometimes his puritanical conscience bothered him. Mrs. Austin's rule was to receive all her friends who liked to come after six o'clock, but Kit had arrived two hours sooner, because Olivia had hinted that he might. She knew Jacinta would not be about, and now thought Kit imagined he ought to go.
The landscape he contemplated had some charm. The sun was behind the mountains, and the dark rocks were a good background for the white town and the cathedral towers. The white was not dead; the shadow had touched it with elusive grey and blue, and the rows of houses glimmered, somehow like pearls. In front the sea was a wonderful ultramarine.
In the meantime, Olivia studied Kit's figure and his face in profile. She thought his profile good, there was something ascetic about its cleanness of line. He was thin, but his white clothes rather emphasised the firm modelling of his neck and shoulders and the curve to his waist. All the same, Olivia thought his quietness tiresome.
"The view from the veranda _is_ rather fine," she said.
Kit looked up with an apologetic smile. "You imply I'm dull? Perhaps I am dull. You see, I was pretty strenuously occupied not long since."