Even when he resumed his stroll after he had looked across the dun waters he became conscious of a change in the eastern sky. The clouds that still clung to that quarter were taking on to themselves the pallor of a pearl, and the sky edge of the sea was lined with the tender glaze that appears on the inner surface of a white shell, and its influence was felt upon the objects of the coast. The ridges of the peninsular rocks glimmered, and the outline of the whole coast became faintly seen. It was coming--the dawn for which the world was waiting was nigh. The doubts born of the night were ready to fly away as that great heron which rose in front of him fled with winnowing wings across the surface of the sea. CHAPTER XXIII The first faint breath of the dawn--that sigh of light of which the air was scarcely conscious--made him aware as he walked along the sands of the fact that the beach was strewn with wreckage. He found himself examining a broken spar upon which he had struck his foot. Further on he stumbled over a hen-coop, and then again a fragment that looked like the cover of a hatchway. He had heard nothing about a vessel's having come ashore during the tempest of the morning; but there was nothing remarkable in the sudden appearing of wreckage on this wild Cornish coast. Almost every tide washed up something that had once been part of a gallant ship. Wreckage came without anyone hearing of the wreck from which it had come. He examined the broken spar, and his fancy showed him the scene at the foundering of such a ship as the _Gloriana_, whose carcase had been so marvellously uncovered on the Sunday evening. He had had enough experience of seafaring to be able to picture the details of the wreckage of such a ship. He left the beach and went on to the ascent of the higher part of the shore, thinking that it might be that when the dawn strengthened it might reveal the shape of some craft that had run ashore on the outer reef at this dangerous part of the coast; and even before he reached the elevated ground the dawn light had spread its faint gauze over the sea, and the shapes of the rocks were plain. He looked out carefully, scanning the whole coast, but he failed to see any wreck between the horns of the bay. But when he had continued his slow walk for a few hundred yards he fancied that he saw some objects that looked dark against the pale sands. At first he thought that he was looking at a rock that had some resemblance to the form of a man; but a movement of a portion of the object showed that it was indeed a man who was standing there.