The icy wind bore with it a burden of
sparkling sand, so that they were often forced to muffle their faces,
walking with heads bowed.
Since Caius would walk, O'Shea ordered the boy back into the cart, and
the two men ploughed on through the sand beside the horse, whose every
hair was turned by the wind, which now struck them sideways, and whose
rugged mane and forelock were streaming horizontally, besprinkled with
sand. The novelty of the situation, the beauty of the sand-wreaths, the
intoxication of the air, the vivid brilliancy of the sun and the sky,
delighted Caius. The blue of heaven rounded the sandscape to their
present sight, a dome of blue flame over a plain whose colour was like
that of an autumn leaf become sear. Caius, in his exhilaration, remarked
upon the strangeness of the place, but either the prospect was too
common to O'Shea to excite his interest, or the enterprise he meditated
burdened his mind; he gave few words in answer, and soon they, too,
relapsed into the silence that the boy and the pony had all the time
observed.
An hour's walk, and another sound rang in their ears beside the
whistling of the wind, low at first and fitful, louder and louder, till
the roar of the surf was deafening. Then they came to the brink and
heard all the notes of which the chords of its more distant music had
been composed, the gasping sob of the under tow, the rush of the lifting
wave as it upreared itself high, the silken break of its foam, the crash
of drums with which it fell, the dash of wave against wave, and the cry
of the foremost waves that bemoaned themselves prostrate upon the beach.
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