United States or Vietnam ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Brefar was populous, and across there they would find many playmates. Brefar, too, held out great promise of adventure after sea-birds' eggs and expeditions of discovery; and if ever the home-sickness came upon them they would cross the sands at low-water and revisit the old haunts and the deserted house. All these consolations, however, they kept to themselves.
Lide's Quay and were hurrying to the search, with lanterns and hurricane lamps. The windows of the Great House on Inniscaw fairly blazed with light. The upland farmsteads, too, were awake, here and in Brefar, and the cottages around Inniscaw schoolhouse and Brefar Church.
Vashti's talk was of the birds, for in all Brefar the spot best worth visiting is Merriman's Head, where the birds congregate in their thousands cormorants, curlews, whimbrels, gulls and kittiwakes, oyster-catchers, sandpipers these all the year round and in early summer the razorbills and sea parrots.
At low-water springs you may cross afoot between Saaron and Brefar, and from either of them, with a little more danger, to Inniscaw, picking your way between the pools and along the sandy flats that curve about the southern end of the Sound and divide it from the great roadstead.
"Your eyes are too good. And, besides, there are people in Brefar who will take care of us if we miss our way back." Vashti smiled, and again half sadly, for out of her own past this child confronted her. "That is brave, Annet; brave enough for the moment, though by and by we shall have to be braver. See how the sands shine below us! Shall we race for them and see who wins?"
"They know we can't get to them," said Matthew Henry. "But wait till I am grown up! Then I'll come over to Brefar and build a bridge." "You will not need a bridge when you are grown up," said Vashti. "See!" She stepped back a pace or two, and the children, before they guessed her purpose, saw her flash past them and leap.
They had discussed it, and agreed together that it was a great shame to be turned out of their home, and that the Lord Proprietor must be a hard-hearted tyrant; but secretly they looked forward to the change with a good deal of excitement, not being of an age to fathom the troubles of grown-up folk. After all, Brefar lay close at hand and was familiar.
"The merry days the merry days, so young," she echoed, after a pause, and lifted her head suddenly. "Hark!" The sound it was the plash of oar grew upon the darkness. A light shot out beyond the last point of Brefar, and its ray fell waving on the black water.
"It is true," said she pensively, "that I am fifteen years a stranger here." His face brightened. "Ah," said he, "if you will make allowance for that, we may yet put everything right!" Saaron Island lies about due north of Brefar, which looks eastward upon Inniscaw across the narrow gut of Cromwell's Sound.
Ann's pilot, he traced and described the currents to the northward of Inniscaw, the Chairman meanwhile, with pencil and paper, assigning the search-parties to the various rocks and groups of islets in or around which it was deemed possible for a floating body to be carried so many boats to North Island, so many to seek along Brefar to W. and S. W. of Merryman's Head, so many to explore the difficult passage between the Outer Dogs.
Word Of The Day