eBooks Base 2000

--Pinkish
yellow starfish, long ribbons of madder-red or emerald seaweed, their
colours the more living and vivid for the clear water covering them.
Presently a company of five birds--their mottled brown and olive bodies
raised on stilt-like legs thin as a straw--claimed her notice. So
bewitched was she by their quaint and pretty ways, that she could not but
follow them as they chased one another in and out of the rippling waves,
ran quickly and bowed catching something eatable floating upon the tide,
scattered and then joined up into a joyous chorus of association with
gentle twittering cries. Watching them, dreaming, standing now and again
looking out over the sweet wonder of the placid sea, sometimes wading
ankle deep, sometimes walking on the firm floor of uncovered sand,
Damaris passed onward losing count of time.
The birds led her eastward, up channel, to the half-mile distant nose of
the Bar, round which the rivers, released at last from their narrow
channel, sweep out into Marychurch Bay.


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