How cool and deep the tumbling waves were, how they came rolling solemnly in, and then seemed to hesitate for one short second before they broke and sent spattering showers up to his very feet. He must go on, of course; it was really a shame to delay longer; he would just watch another breaker come in, and then another—and another, so that he might see again those shining rainbows that came and went in the sunlit spray.
He heard something scurry and scuttle across the rock near by him and, as he looked over the edge, saw a slim, brown mink come out of a hole and stop to look up at him. It must have had a nest near by, for it was fierce in its anger at his intrusion and seemed quite unafraid. Its wicked little eyes fairly snapped with rage, and it made a queer hissing sound as it tried, with tiny fury, to frighten him away. He laughed and turned to go, then started back suddenly as he spied a face peering out at him for a moment from behind the big, grey rock above him. It struck him, startled as he was, that the human face was something like the mink’s; the same narrow cruel jaw, the same retreating forehead, the little beady black eyes and stiff black hair. With a great effort, although his heart hammered at his ribs and his knees shook a little, if the truth must be told, he climbed up to the jutting rock and looked behind it. There was no one there. He drew a sigh of relief at the thought that he must have been mistaken, then checked it sharply when he saw a black shadow, thin, lithe and quickly-moving, slip across the surface of the rocks and vanish.
Billy’s passage over the causeway was a hasty and somewhat perilous one, for the rocks were overgrown with thick, brown seaweed and still wet from the falling tide. Considering what a hurry he was in and how many times he looked back over his shoulder, it was quite remarkable that he made the crossing without mishap. He walked up a strip of sandy beach, climbed a steep bank and came into the cool, dark pine woods. The faint marks of an old road showed before him, covered with a rusty-brown carpet of fallen needles and leading past the big, grey empty mill of which the Captain had spoken. He followed along it, turned down the lane as directed and tramped some distance straight through the forest, the tall black trees towering above him and the partridge berries, trailing ground pine and slender swinging Indian pines growing thick beneath his feet.