And yet the air was full of sound, a low deep roar which hovered over down and wood, salt-marsh and river, like the roll of a thousand wheels, the tramp of endless armies, or--what it was--the thunder of a mighty surge upon the boulders of the pebble ridge.
"The ridge is noisy to-night," said Sir Richard.

"There has been wind somewhere." "There is wind now, where my boy is, God help him!" said Mrs.Leigh: and all knew that she spoke truly.

The spirit of the Atlantic storm had sent forward the token of his coming, in the smooth ground-swell which was heard inland, two miles away.

To-morrow the pebbles, which were now rattling down with each retreating wave, might be leaping to the ridge top, and hurled like round-shot far ashore upon the marsh by the force of the advancing wave, fleeing before the wrath of the western hurricane.
"God help my boy!" said Mrs.Leigh again.
"God is as near him by sea as by land," said good Sir Richard.
"True, but I am a lone mother; and one that has no heart just now but to go home and pray." And so Mrs.Leigh went onward up the lane, and spent all that night in listening between her prayers to the thunder of the surge, till it was drowned, long ere the sun rose, in the thunder of the storm.
And where is Amyas on this same Christmas afternoon?
Amyas is sitting bareheaded in a boat's stern in Smerwick bay, with the spray whistling through his curls, as he shouts cheerfully-- "Pull, and with a will, my merry men all, and never mind shipping a sea.
Cannon balls are a cargo that don't spoil by taking salt-water." His mother's presage has been true enough.

Christmas eve has been the last of the still, dark, steaming nights of the early winter; and the western gale has been roaring for the last twelve hours upon the Irish coast.
The short light of the winter day is fading fast.