At the Bay

MP3 Audio CD. At the Bay

1. AT THE BAY.

Chapter 1.I.

Very early morning. The sun was not yet risen, and the whole of Crescent
Bay was hidden under a white sea-mist. The big bush-covered hills at the
back were smothered. You could not see where they ended and the paddocks
and bungalows began. The sandy road was gone and the paddocks and
bungalows the other side of it; there were no white dunes covered with
reddish grass beyond them; there was nothing to mark which was beach and
where was the sea. A heavy dew had fallen. The grass was blue. Big drops
hung on the bushes and just did not fall; the silvery, fluffy toi-toi
was limp on its long stalks, and all the marigolds and the pinks in the
bungalow gardens were bowed to the earth with wetness. Drenched were the
cold fuchsias, round pearls of dew lay on the flat nasturtium leaves. It
looked as though the sea had beaten up softly in the darkness, as though
one immense wave had come rippling, rippling--how far? Perhaps if you
had waked up in the middle of the night you might have seen a big fish
flicking in at the window and gone again....

Ah-Aah! sounded the sleepy sea. And from the bush there came the sound
of little streams flowing, quickly, lightly, slipping between the smooth
stones, gushing into ferny basins and out again; and there was the
splashing of big drops on large leaves, and something else--what was
it?--a faint stirring and shaking, the snapping of a twig and then such
silence that it seemed some one was listening.

Round the corner of Crescent Bay, between the piled-up masses of broken
rock, a flock of sheep came pattering. They were huddled together, a
small, tossing, woolly mass, and their thin, stick-like legs trotted
along quickly as if the cold and the quiet had frightened them. Behind
them an old sheep-dog, h