When the minister set forth on his return, the sun still hung low over the eastern sea, and reddened the waves, foam-flecked and tossing in angry recollection of the lash of last night's gale. In the ebb they had shrunk far back across the sands, but again the tide had turned and was advancing. The fisher folk were not astir. No boats could be expected home that morning. Such as were away during the gale must have put in for refuge somewhere, or been swallowed by the sea; nor would any stir outside the harbour till the sea went down. Perforce they must rest; and they rested. The cottages were still shut up, and no smoke curled from the chimneys as Roderick rode over the roughly causewayed street, past the harbour, where a lugger or two swayed up and down upon the heaving tide, and down upon the sands beyond, that he might avoid the long detour of the night before. The Effick Water spreads itself out into a small firth or bay some three or four miles round, but the mouth of this bay is encumbered by upstanding rocks and boulders, and about these a bar or beach has gathered, standing up out of the water at all times, save the highest tides, or when the sea is driven up by an easterly gale. Through this beach the Effick cuts a channel for its own escape, and that of the water in the bay at the tide's turn, but it is fordable at any time, and at low water is but an insignificant trickling over the shingly beach. The Point of Inverlyon divides Inverlyon bay and harbour from the Bay of Effick, it runs sharply out into the sea and completely conceals the one from the other; and, in those days of scanty provision for the ship-wrecked, a vessel might be driven ashore in the latter desolate bay without the people of the village being aware, especially if the catastrophe took place after dark; and their first intimation would be when in scanning the shore after a gale they came on the wreckage. It was an hour or two after Roderick had started before the first band of prowlers set forth to search for the rejected spoils of victorious Ocean. The shore was solitary, and he was the first to come upon the tokens of the night's disaster. On passing the point, he found the shattered relics scattered on every side--boxes, barrels, planks, wreckage of every kind. By and by he came upon a stove-in boat, and a little further along the body of a drowned sailor lay upon the sand. He was but partly dressed, and the dark yellow tinge of his skin, the straight black hair, prominent features, and set of the eyes, as well as the long, strange-looking knife, tied securely to his waist, showed him to be a Lascar. So the ship probably had been an East Indiaman, had sailed in safety round the Cape, crossed the Bay of Biscay, and escaped who can tell how many perils, and all to be cast away in the end on this solitary shore, within a few leagues or hours of her destined haven.