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The great troubled sea was all of a dark slate-green, with no glad ripples of white, but with long-squally drifts of black; and a cold wind was blowing gustily in; and there were hurrying clouds of a leaden hue tearing across the sky. As for the islands where were they?
The skipper's expectation proved to be warranted, and, when Wyllard turned out, the stretch of shore lay before them, a dingy smear on a slate-green sea that was cut off from it by a wavy line of vivid whiteness, which he knew to be a fringe of spouting surf.
After that, he looked resolutely astern over his companion's shoulders as she swung up between him and the sea with the slate-green ridges and tumbling white tops of the combers behind her. At length a hazarded glance showed him that they were close inshore, and he wondered for a moment whether he could swing the dinghy round without rolling the boat over.
His expectation also proved warranted, and when Wyllard turned out it lay before them, a dingy smear on a slate-green sea that was cut off from it by a wavy line of livid whiteness, which he knew to be a fringe of spouting surf.
Then he crawled among the boulders near low-water mark, and, since oysters are tolerably plentiful along those beaches, succeeded in collecting several dozen of them. After that he sat down and gazed seaward for a minute or two. There was no sign of the Tillicum, only a strip of dingy, slate-green sea smeared with streaks of froth, which shone white beneath a heavy, lowering sky.
"Behind the sled there stirred the snow anew, an' in a moment or two another column threw itself at the sky, and behind us an' around, other of these columns rose an' moved like spectral dancers under the slate-green clouds of the snow-filled sky. No wind, no sound but the lone leader of the team howlin' in utter fear." "A dancing blizzard!" said Barnes, in an awed tone, under his breath.
There was very little wind just then and presently the tug was close alongside, pitching her bows out of the slow swell, while a great mass of timber wonderfully chained together surged along astern, the dim, slate-green sea washing over it. A shapeless oil-skinned figure stood outside her pilot-house, balancing itself against the heave of the bridge, which slanted and straightened. "Winstanley?"
When late in the afternoon Carroll fixed their position by the bearing of a peak on the island, he pointed out the small progress they had made. The sloop was then plunging close-hauled through the vicious slate-green combers, and thin showers of spray flew all over her. "The luck's been dead against us ever since we began this search," he commented. "Do you believe in that kind of foolishness?"
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