The morning was fine, and seemed to promise one of the peculiarly
hushed, pellucid days that occur sometimes before rain in early
winter. From the first gleam of dawn the sky was covered with white
cloud, and the tranquillity was so complete that every sound seemed
to float away by itself across the silence of the bay. Lines of blue
smoke were going up in spirals over the village, and further off
heavy fragments of rain-cloud were lying on the horizon. We started
early in the day, and, although the sea looked calm from a distance,
we met a considerable roll coming from the south-west when we got
out from the shore.
Near the middle of the sound the man who was rowing in the bow broke
his oar-pin, and the proper management of the canoe became a matter
of some difficulty. We had only a three-oared curagh, and if the sea
had gone much higher we should have run a good deal of danger. Our
progress was so slow that clouds came up with a rise in the wind
before we reached the shore, and rain began to fall in large single
drops. The black curagh working slowly through this world of grey,
and the soft hissing of the rain gave me one of the moods in which
we realise with immense distress the short moment we have left us to
experience all the wonder and beauty of the world.
The approach to the south island is made at a fine sandy beach on
the north-west.
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