8o GARRYOWEN 



for? " replied the other, turning the boat's nose 

 and sculhng her with a few pov\^erful strokes to 

 the creek's mouth, where the incoming swell lifted 

 her with a buoyant and balloon-like motion that 

 brought a sickening sense of insecurity to the 

 heart of the girl. 



" Well, I thought he was coming with us or I 

 would not have got in." 



" Well, you're in now," said Mr Giveen, " and 

 there's no use crying over spilt milk." 



He had taken his hat off and his bald head 

 shone in the sun. Snow-white gulls were flpng 

 in the blue overhead. The profound and glassy 

 swell, which was scarcely noticeable from the 

 shore, out here made vales and hills of water, long 

 glass-green slopes in which the sea-weed floated 

 Hke mermaids' hair. 



Far out, now, the loveliness of the scene around 

 her made the girl forget for a moment her sense of 

 insecurity. The whole beauty and warmth of 

 summer seemed gathered into that September 

 afternoon, and the coast showed itself league upon 

 league, vast cliff and silent strand, snowed with 

 seagulls, terns, guillemots, and fading away twenty 

 miles to the north and twenty miles to the south 

 in the haze and the blueness of the summer 

 sky. 



The great silence, the vast distances, the happy 

 blue of sea and sky, the voicelessness of that 

 tremendous coast — all these cast the mind of the 

 gazer into a trance in which the soul responded 



