Tom Tiddler's Island, стр. 52
He put on his shooting-boots, pulled a cap well down, and belted a trench-coat about him. Then, on the off chance that he might see something, he picked up his binoculars and slung them round his neck. The front door nearly wrenched itself out of his hand as he opened it; and the rain, driving before a gust, made him blink as he emerged from the loggia.
“Dirty weather, sure enough,” was his mental comment. “Just as well these girls didn’t come out. No fun for them, this.”
At the gate he halted and looked about him in the stormy twilight. The gale had played havoc with the lupin field; swathes of the plants had been blown down, making broad gaps in the blue. Down below him great waves were bursting among the skerry rocks, spouting huge spray-fountains as they broke. The roar of wind and rain, deadened within the house, resounded now like distant artillery. Colin enjoyed a good storm: the feel of the wind beating about him like a live thing, the thrill of the rain driving into his face, and the tumult of wind and water in his ears.
He had meant to go down to the jetty, and from that point of vantage watch the lashing of wind and tide upon the coast; but, as he gazed, a burst of spray rose from a breaking wave and fell heavily, drenching the pier-top with tons of water. Evidently that was not the post for him. His sensations there might cost more than they were worth.
He turned his back to the wind and followed the path through the field of lupins in the direction of Heather Lodge. Up on the headland he would get the best view that could be had. The Heather Lodge skiff, he noted, had been carried up the beach far out of danger.
Among the heather beyond the lupin field he had to pick his steps. The wind was unsteady and intermittent: fierce squalls were followed by sudden calms. Like the wind, the rain came in gusts, sometimes stinging his ears and driving past him in clouds across the slope, at others falling almost gently on the heather.
“Don’t envy Northfleet,” Colin reflected as he trudged along. “All right to be here in the thick of it. O.K. to be behind a good stout house-wall. But in that shieling he gets the worst of it, both ways: all the draughts and none of the comfort.”
Then it occurred to him that someone must be even worse off than Northfleet in this weather: the detective, camping out on the moor. Colin had an impulse to seek out Wenlock and invite him to take shelter at Wester Voe. No tent could ever stand up to this gale. Further consideration led him to put this charitable notion aside. If Wenlock wanted shelter he knew where to find it. Colin could hardly be expected to wander over the hill-sides on the offchance of running across him.
He climbed the headland, where the wind blew even more fiercely, and sat down on an outcropping rock to take in the panorama. A blink of angry light fell on the sea from a rift in the cloud-banks, and Colin could see the white horses, rank behind rank, in endless advance from out of the mists which hid the horizon. Here and there a squall raised a cloud of spindrift, an acre or two in extent, and drove it swiftly over the furrowed sea like some fast-moving wraith. Down below the waves surged and thundered upon the skerry, churning up sheets of foam, which drifted into the bay and whitened its waters. Suddenly the wind fell and grew steadier. The rain ceased, and Colin could see more clearly, now that its veil was withdrawn.
All at once his eye caught a dark speck out on the waste of tossing water: something hidden at times by spray which broke over it, but reappearing as the waves passed by. He lifted his binoculars and stared intently, unconsciously rising to his feet to get a better view. In the field of his glasses he saw a black motorboat, larger than the Wester Voe craft but smaller than the Heather Lodge supply-vessel. It was making heavy weather; the waves seemed to be dashing over it, and at times Colin’s heart came to his throat as it vanished in a cloud of spume. It seemed to carry a crew of six; and from the vague glimpses which he caught, most of them appeared to be baling hard.
“Fairly catching it, out there,” was Colin’s comment. “Shouldn’t care to be aboard that boat just now. Silly owls! Why don’t they get down into the lee of Ruffa, instead of barging out yonder into the thick of it? Lucky for them the wind seems to be dropping.”
The tail of his eye caught a movement beside him, and he turned to find the muffled-up figure of the detective approaching.
“See that boat out there?” Colin asked, pointing as he spoke. “Here! Take the glasses.”
He unslung his binoculars and passed them to Wenlock.
“Over yonder, see?”
The detective put up the glasses, fiddled for a moment with the focusing, and then swept the grey waste below him.
“I see them now, quite plain,” he reported. “The wind seems to be going down, out yonder, but they’re baling hard. Now they’re coming round. I shouldn’t care to risk that, myself, with a