He turned to address his daughter, but she was no longer at his side;
and, looking in the distance, he perceived her climbing a high and
jutting rock, from which the ocean, for miles around, was distinctly
visible. Ellen, for that was her name, having at length ascended, stood
with agile yet firm feet on the eminence, shading, with one hand, the
sun, which now, peering from behind a mass of dark purple clouds, lit up
for a moment the turbid waves, and gleamed on rock and beach and
fishermen's huts,--and with the other holding on to the sharp edge of a
projecting rock, that still towered above her. Nor as she thus stood,
was she, by any means, an unpicturesque object; the sunshine glancing on
her neatly arranged brown hair, her tall figure, slight for that of a
hardy fisherman's child, clad in a black skirt and crimson jacket, and
every feature of her speaking countenance wearing a commingled
expression of anxiety, hope, and tenderness.
How her eager vision seemed to catch, in a moment, each feature of the
scene; the sandy beach--the rugged hill--her father's shallop--and he,
standing in the position she had left him, gazing out into the sea; and
with what a lingering, straining glance, did her eyes wander over that
pathless ocean, while her heart sank within her, as she contemplated its
angry and menacing appearance.
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