The Waverley novels, by Sir Walter Scott, complete in 12 vol., printed from the latest English ed., embracing the author's last corrections, prefaces & notes.

946 WAV E L WAVERLEY NOVELS.
his huge disk upon the edge of the level ocean, and gilded the accumulation
of towering clouds through which he had travelled the livelong day, and
which now assembled on all sides, like misfortunes and disasters around a
sinking empire and falling monarch. Still, however, his dying splendour
gave a sombre magnificence to the massive congregation of vapours, forming
out of their unsubstantial gloom the show of pyramids and towers, some
touched with gold, some with purple, some with a hue of deep and dark
red. The distant sea, stretched beneath this varied and gorgeous canopy,
lay almost portentously still, reflecting back the dazzling and level beams
of the descending luminary, and the splendid colouring of the clouds
amidst which he was setting. Nearer to the beach, the tide rippled onward
in waves of sparkling silver, that imperceptibly, yet rapidly, gained upon
the sand.
With a mind employed in admiration of the romantic scene, or perhaps
on some more agitating topic, Miss Wardour advanced in silence by her
father's side, whose recently offended dignity did not stoop to open any conversation. Following the windings of the beach, they passed one projecting
point of headland or rock after another, and now found themselves under a
huge and continued extent of the precipices by which that iron-bound coast
is in most places defended. Long projecting reefs of rock, extending under
water, and only evincing their existence by here and there a peak entirely
bare, or by the breakers which foamed over those that were partially
covered, rendered Knockwinnock bay dreaded by pilots and ship-masters.
The crags which rose between the beach and the mainland, to the height
of two or three hundred feet, afforded in their crevices shelter for unnumbered sea-fowl, in situations seemingly secured by their dizzy height from
the rapacity of man. Many of these wild tribes, with the instinct which
sends them to seek the land before a storm arises, were now winging
towards their nests with the shrill and dissonant clang which announces
disquietude and fear. The disk of the sun became almost totally obscured
ere he had altogether sunk below the horizon, and an early and lurid shade
of darkness blotted the serene twilight of a summer evening. The wind
began next to arise; but its wild and moaning sound was heard for some
time, and its effects became visible on the bosom of the sea, before the gale
was felt on shore. The mass of waters, now dark and threatening, began
to lift itself in larger ridges, and sink in deeper furrows, forming waves
that rose high in foam upon the breakers, or burst upon the beach with a
sound resembling distant thunder.
Appalled by this sudden change of weather, MIiss Wardour drew close to
her father, and held his arm fast. " I wish," at length she said, but almost
in a whisper, as if ashamed to express her increasing apprehensions, "I
wish we had kept the road we had intended, or waited at Monkbarns for the
carriage."
Sir Arthur looked round, but did not see, or would not acknowledge, any
signs of an immediate storm. They would reach Knockwinnock, he said,
long before the tempest began. But the speed with which he walked, and
with which Isabella could hardly keep pace, indicated a feeling that some
exertion was necessary to accomplish his consolatory prediction.
They were now near the centre of a deep but narrow bay, or recess,
formed by two projecting capes of high and inaccessible rock, which shot
out into the sea like the horns of a crescent; - and neither durst communicate the apprehension which each began to entertain, that, from the -unusually rapid advance of the tide, they might be deprived of the power of
proceeding by doubling the promontory which lay before them, or of
retreating by the road which brought them thither.
As they thus pressed forward, longing doubtless to exchange the easy
curving line, which the sinuosities of the bay compelled them to adopt, for
a straighter and muore expeditious path, though less conformable to the line