The rock shore is too slippery and grim tonight." Alone on the sands of the bar Anne gave herself up to the eerie charm of the night.

It was warm for September, and the late afternoon had been very foggy; but a full moon had in part lessened the fog and transformed the harbor and the gulf and the surrounding shores into a strange, fantastic, unreal world of pale silver mist, through which everything loomed phantom-like.

Captain Josiah Crawford's black schooner sailing down the channel, laden with potatoes for Bluenose ports, was a spectral ship bound for a far uncharted land, ever receding, never to be reached.

The calls of unseen gulls overhead were the cries of the souls of doomed seamen.

The little curls of foam that blew across the sand were elfin things stealing up from the sea-caves.
The big, round-shouldered sand-dunes were the sleeping giants of some old northern tale.