The sky was partly covered by heavy masses of broken clouds, in an opening of which the sun was just setting over dark growths of pine and spruce that rose behind the dunes, a little back from the beach. As it went down, the shadows of the woods stretched out, like wings, over the dunes and the smooth, glistening slope of beach sand, just washed by the receding tide. Then the sunset light on the white crests of the breakers was quenched, and the whole sea was in gloom. For a moment only, for now the flying clouds caught a flush which spread swiftly over the sky, until the entire heavens, almost down to the sea rim, appeared one burning flame. The sea itself had a strange, wild beauty, the dark and sullen waters but half consenting to reflect the glow of the clouds on their heaving waves. CHAPTER V. LAUNCHING THE DORY. "Just the time to take a little row," thought Olly Burdeen, as he strolled about, looking sometimes admiringly at his new clothes and the gay watch-guard, and sometimes casting wistful glances at the sea. He knew the thrilling pleasure of crossing and recrossing the breakers in a good boat, and rocking on the swells outside. "I believe I'll try it once," he said. "Maybe I can see the yacht around the point." The point was a rocky arm of the shore which shut off the ocean view on the north-east, the direction from which the Susette was expected. But the little harbor it would have to enter was a deep cove in the broken coast at the other end of the beach, a quarter of a mile away. "It can't possibly come in without my seeing it in season," thought Olly, with a glance at the watch, which he took from his pocket and opened and shut again with a sort of guilty joy, for the twentieth time. There were a couple of dories drawn up above high-water mark; and he knew where a pair of old battered oars were hidden under a row of bathing-houses close by. He drew them out and threw them on the sand. Then he looked at the seaweed in his way,--little windrows of it littering the beach, and dark masses rolling in the surf. The tide had been going out about three hours. "I can get through that easily enough," he said. He dragged the lightest of the dories down to the water's edge, and put in the oars. He knew just how it should be launched, and understood the necessity of sending it straight across the breakers, and of never, by any chance, letting them strike it sidewise. Placing himself at the upper end, he waited for a good wave, and pushed the boat into it,--running with it until his feet were almost in the water, then holding it firmly until another wave lifted it. Just as that was subsiding, he gave the dory another push, leaped in at the same time, caught up the oars, and had them in the rowlocks and in the water just as the third wave came.