“ ROAD used to run down to the inlet,” said the lean, garrulous driver, humped over his wheel. The main trunks were buried the higher boughs peeled, blanched and drained of life, protruded like the bleached antlers of mammoth elk, seeking resurrection.

The conquering grit, carrying the cliff by slow assault, had marched up to the very lintel of the door, spreading a dun carpet where soft turf had grown, smothering the orchard that once bloomed and bore. Where the dunes mounted now, salt-water had washed and roared and honeycombed the buried cliff. He looked at the house, built of stone, grim, substantial, four-square, its seaward windows flaming with the afterglow, like deep-socketed eyes that glared defiance at the usurping sands. Billows of sand replaced the waves that once had leaped in Windy Bay, formed with infinite persistence to a seemingly useless end: grain after grain, shifting, piling, year after year, choking the haven, forming a no-man's land between sea and shore. Between the ancient headlands the sand had reclaimed the sea. Some of the slopes were long, smooth drifts others were rippled by the wind tawny plumes of yellow sea-grass grew sparsely on the crests. Choked the sea an' nigh swallered the cliff.”īenson gazed across the waste of dunes. Water, from below where we are, clear across to the spur of rocky ground yonder. That was the name of it on the old charts. “There's the house! Used to stand close to the edge of the cliff one time, lookin' out to sea across Windy Bay. THE rattletrap car came squeakingly to a halt and the driver shut off the chattering engine to make himself more easily heard.

Marked stone grim dawn