A fresh breeze swept the wide expanse streaked with
purple and green and turned an occasional broken wave-crest toward the
western light. Some large cumuli were abroad--white, or less white, or even
darkling,--the first windy sky of autumn.
Cope and Amy passed the life-saving station, where a few people sat about
idly and where one or two visitors pressed noses against glass panes to
view the boats within; and they reached presently a sort of little public
park which lay along the water. Here a small pier ran out past the
shallows, and in front of a shack close by it a man sat resignedly near a
group of beached and upturned row-boats. One or two others were still in
the water, as was a small sloop. The fellow sat there without expectations:
the season was about over; the day was none too promising for such as knew.
His attitude expressed, in fact, the accumulated disappointment and
resignation of many months. Perhaps he was a new-comer from the interior--
some region of ponds and rivers--and had kept through an uneventful summer
the notion that so big a spread of water would surely be put to use.
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