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The business before his eyes continued: the beach babbled with voices, and the fires sprang up and sank, and the shells vanished and were renewed again even while he looked. "It was a by-day when I was here before," he thought, "for it was nothing to this."
She spoke in this way because the inhabitants of Alca, having no news of Kraken since he went to live on the Beach of Shadows, believed that he had died and descended among the demons of night. "Cease to fear, daughter of Alca," answered Kraken. "He who speaks to thee is not a wandering spirit, but a man full of strength and might. I shall soon possess great riches."
But they hung so heavily that I found myself struggling in an almost impenetrable thicket; and when at length I gained the opening, and drew breath, above the splash of waves on the beach I heard a sound which caused me to huddle back like a rabbit surprised in the mouth of its burrow.
"Cracky, look at him tear up the beach," exclaimed Bruce. "Rather early in the morning to risk one's neck, eh? It's only four o'clock. Guess they are doing their last tuning up before the events start," said Jiminy. "Say, how do they race?" asked fat Babe Wilson. "Do they line 'em up like a lot of sprinters and start 'em when a pistol is fired?"
I suppose other people may have discovered it before, but as I have seen no proof of this I am not bound to believe it. We named it Racket Island, having found on the beach an old tennis racket, which had been washed there by the waves from no one knows where. The island is not more than half a mile long, with a very irregular coast. The other end of it, you see, is pretty well wooded.
"'It is three miles from here to the beach, he said, 'and I have seen men coming with their presents for the chief, walking a yard apart, and yet the line stretched all the way to the beach. "He could hardly ride back to Tai-o-hae, and he departed with the Tropic Bird without saying another word to any one." Typee, they told me, was half way to Atiheu and a good four miles by horse.
"There is so much that I have always wanted to see," he continued, "but I've had sense enough to wait until I found the right girl so we could go and see it together. Switzerland and the Nile and Japan and the Riviera, with 'its skies for ever blue. Any place we liked, we could stay till we were tired of it. And a house in New York and an island in the St. Lawrence or down near Palm Beach.
The prizes are choice berths on the beach as near as possible to the kottu, and the coolies who must carry the sacks of oysters see to it that the "tindal" and his sailors make no retarding error. The camp had been peaceful and somnolent while the boats were out; but the word that the fleet was coming in had roused every laborer, every petty dealer, speculator, and harpy to nervous activity.
The rest of that summer, and the fall, were like an exquisite dream. All the Bradleys were well, and happier than their happiest dream. Nancy took the children swimming daily on the quiet, deserted beach just above the club grounds; on Saturdays and Sundays they all went swimming.
And between you and me, Peter, I'm glad it's inland. I've had enough of the sea for a while and I don't want to look at it. How is it behaving now?" Robert, looking back, saw a great wave rushing upon the beach as if it thought it could overtake them, and it gave him an actual thrill of delight to know the effort would be in vain.
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