CHAPTER IV.


THE RUNNING SANDS.

He awoke to find the sun shining in at his window. At first he
wondered what had happened. The window seemed to be in the ceiling,
and the ceiling sloped down to the walls, and all the furniture had
gone astray into wrong positions. Then he remembered, jumped out of
bed, and drew the blind.

He saw a blue line of sea, so clearly drawn that the horizon might
have been a string stretched from the corner eaves to the snow-white
light-house standing on the farthest spit of land; blue sea and
yellow sand curving round it, with a white edge of breakers; inshore,
the sand rising to a cliff ridged with grassy hummocks; farther
inshore, the hummocks united and rolling away up to inland downs, but
broken here and there on their way with scars of sand; over all,
white gulls wheeling. He could hear the nearest ones mewing as they
sailed over the house.

Taffy had seen the sea once before, at Dawlish, on the journey to
Tewkesbury; and again on the way home. But here it was bluer
altogether, and the sands were yellower. Only he felt disappointed
that no ship was in sight, nor any dwelling nearer than the
light-house and the two or three white cottages behind it.
He dressed in a hurry and said his prayers, repeating at the close,