“If that’s the case, let’s get away as early in the day as we can. Breakfasts, of course, are late in every household on Sunday. So let’s meet at the Maroon-and-Purple Tavern at seven-thirty, and make a flying start at eight.”
Sunday morning came clear and calm and warm to the town—a belated September day, or possibly an early intimation of Indian summer—and it promised to be even more delightful in the favored region toward which our friends were journeying. After they had cleared many miles of foundries and railroad crossings, and had paralleled for a last half-hour a distant succession of sandhills, wooded or glistening white, they were set down at a small group of farmhouses, with a varied walk of five miles before them. Half a mile through a shaded country lane; another half-mile along a path that led across low, damp ground through thickets of hazel and brier; a third half-mile over a light soil, increasingly sandy, beneath oaks and lindens and pines which cloaked the outlines of the slopes ahead; and finally a great mound of pure sand that slanted up into a blue sky and made its own horizon.
“We’ve taken things easy,” said Randolph, who had been that way before, “and I hope we have enough breath left for our job. There it lies, right in front of us.”
“No favor asked here,” declared Cope. He gave a sly, sidewise glance, as if to ask how the other might stand as to leg-muscles and wind.
“Up we go,” said Randolph.
IX
Cope on the Edge of Things
The adventurer in Duneland hardly knows, as he works his way through one of the infrequent “blowouts,” whether to thank Nature for her aid or to tax her with her cruelty. She offers few other means of reaching the water save for these nicks in the edges of the great cup; yet it is possible enough to view her as a careless and reckless handmaiden busily devastating the cosmical china-closet. The “blowout” is a tragedy, and the cause of further tragedy. The north winds, in the impetus gathered through a long, unimpeded flight over three hundred miles of water, ceaselessly try and test the sandy bulwarks for a slightest opening. The flaw once found, the work of devastation and desolation begins; and, once begun, it continues without cessation. Every hurricane cuts a wider and deeper gash, fills the air with clouds of loose sand, and gives sinister addition to the white shifting heaps and fields that steal slowly yet unrelentingly over the green hinterland of forest which lies below the southern slopes. Trees yet to die stand in passive bands at their feet; the stark, black trunks of trees long dead rise here and there in spots where the sand-glacier has done its work of ruin and passed on.
After some moments of scrambling and panting our two travelers gained the divide. Below them sloped a great amphitheatre of sand, falling in irregular gradations; and at the foot of all lay the lake, calmly azure, with its horizon, whether near or far for it was almost impossible to say—mystically vague. On either hand rose other hills of sand, set with sparse pines and covered, in patches, with growths of wild grape, the fruit half ripened. Within the amphitheatre, at various levels, rose grimly a few stumps and shreds of cedars long dead and long indifferent to the future ravages of the enemy. The whole scene was, today, plausibly gentle and inert. It was indeed a bridal of earth and sky, with the self-contained approval of the blue deep and no counter-assertion from any demon wind.
“So far, so good,” said Randolph, taking off his hat, wiping his forehead, and breathing just a little harder than he liked. “The rest of our course is plain: down those slopes, and then a couple of miles along the shore. Easy walking, that; a mere promenade on a boulevard.”
Cope stood on the height, and tossed his bare head like a tireless young colt. The sun fell bright on his mane of yellow hair. He took in a deep breath. “It’s good!” he declared. “It’s great! And the water looks better yet. Shall we make it in a rush?”
He began to plunge down the long, broken sand-slope. Each step was worth ten. Randolph followed—with judgment. He would not seem young enough to be a competitor, nor yet old enough to be a drag. On the shore he wiped and panted a little more—but not to the point of embarrassment, and still less to the point of mortification. After all, he was keeping up pretty well.
At the bottom Cope, with his shoes full of sand, turned round and looked up the slope down which his companion was coming. He waved his arms. “It’s almost as fine from here!” he cried.
The beach, once gained, was in sight both ways for miles. Not a human habitation was visible, nor a human being. Two or three gulls flew a little out from shore, and the tracks of a sandpiper led from the wet shingle to the first fringe of sandgrass higher up.
“Where are the crowds?” asked Cope, with a sonorous shout.
“Miles behind,” replied Randolph. “We haven’t come this long distance to meet them after all. Besides,” he continued, looking at his watch, “this is not the time of day for them. At twelve-fifteen people are not strolling or tramping; they’re thinking of their dinner. We have a full hour or more for making less than two easy miles before we reach ours.”
“No need to hurry, then.”
The beach, at its edge, was firm, and they strolled on for half a mile and cooled off as they went. The air was mild; the noonday sun was warm; both of them had taken off their coats.
They sat down under a clump of basswoods, the only trees beyond the foot of the
