The blue water had lost its glitter, for they were now between it and the sun, and the freshening breeze, as it swept over, darkened the surface. They were too far to see the waves, but that they were rising was evident since the water no longer reflected the sky like a mirror. The sky was cloudless, but the water seemed in shadow, rough and hard. It was full half a mile or more down to where the wood touched the shore of the New Sea and shut out their view, so that they could not tell how far it extended. Serendib and the Unknown Island were opposite, and they could see the sea all round them from the height where they sat. “We left the sea behind us,” said Mark. “The compass took us right away from it.” “We began wrong somehow,” said Bevis. In fact they had walked in a long curve, so that when they thought the New Sea was on Mark’s right, it was really on his left hand. “I must put down on the map that people must go west, not east, or they will never get round.” “It must be thousands of miles round,” said Mark; “thousands and thousands.” “So it is,” said Bevis, “and only to think nobody ever saw it before you and me.” “What a long way we can see,” said Mark, pointing to where the horizon and the blue wooded plain below, beyond the sea, became hazy together. “What country is that?” “I do not know; no one has ever been there.” “Which way is England?” asked Mark. “How can I tell when I don’t know where we are?” The ash sprays touching each other formed a green surface beneath them, extending to the right and left--a green surface into which every now and then a wood-pigeon plunged, closing his wings as the sea-birds dive into the sea. They sat in the shadow of the great beech, and the wind, coming up over the wood, blew cool against their faces. The swallows had left the sky, to go down and glide over the rising waves below. “Come on,” said Bevis, incapable of rest unless he was dreaming. “If we keep along the top of the hill we shall know where we are going, and perhaps see a way round presently.” They followed the edge of the low cliff as nearly as they could, walking under the beeches where it was cool and shady, and the wind blow through. Twice they saw squirrels, but they were too quick, and Bevis could not get a shot with his bow. “We ought to take home something,” said Mark. “Something wonderful. There ought to be some pieces of gold about, or a butterfly as big as a plate. Can’t you see something?” “There’s a dragonfly,” said Bevis. “If we can’t catch him, we can say we saw one made of emerald, and here’s a feather.” He picked up a pheasant’s feather. The dragonfly refused to be caught, he rushed up into the air nearly perpendicularly; and seeing another squirrel some way ahead, they left the dragonfly and crept from beech trunk to beech trunk towards him.