The Sea Mystery
By Freeman Wills Crofts.
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I
Mr. Morgan Meets Tragedy
The Burry Inlet, on the south coast of Wales, looks its best from the sea. At least so thought Mr. Morgan as he sat in the sternsheets of his boat, a fishing-line between his fingers, while his son, Evan, pulled lazily over the still water.
In truth, the prospect on this pleasant autumn evening would have pleased a man less biased by pride of fatherland than Mr. Morgan. The Inlet at full tide forms a wide sheet of water, penetrating in an easterly direction some ten miles into the land, with the county of Carmarthen to the north and the Gower Peninsula to the south. The shores are flat, but rounded hills rise inland which merge to form an undulating horizon of high ground. Here and there along the coast are sand-dunes, whose grays and yellows show up in contrast to the greens of the grasslands and the woods beyond.
To the southeast, over by Salthouse Point and Penclawdd, Mr. Morgan could see every detail of house and sand-dune, tree and meadow, lit up with a shining radiance, but the northwest hills behind Burry Port were black and solid against the setting sun. Immediately north lay Llanelly, with its dingy colored buildings, its numberless chimneys, and the masts and funnels of the steamers in its harbor.
It was a perfect evening in late , the close of a perfect day. Not a cloud appeared in the sky and scarcely a ripple stirred the surface of the sea. The air was warm and balmy, and all nature seemed drowsing in languorous content. Save for the muffled noise of the Llanelly mills, borne over the water, and the slow, rhythmic creak of the oars, no sound disturbed the sleepy quiet.
Mr. Morgan was a small, clean-shaven man in a worn and baggy Norfolk suit which was the bane of Mrs. Morgan’s existence, but in which the soul of her lord and master delighted as an emblem of freedom from the servitude of the office. He leaned back in the sternsheets, gazing out dreamily on the broad sweep of the Inlet and the lengthening shadows ashore. At times his eyes and thoughts turned to his son, Evan, the fourteen-year-old boy who was rowing. A good boy, thought Mr. Morgan, and big for his age. Though he had been at school for nearly three years, he was still his father’s best pal. As Mr. Morgan thought of the relations between some of his friends and their sons, he felt a wave of profound thankfulness sweep over him.
Presently the boy stopped rowing.
“Say, dad, we’ve not had our usual luck today,” he remarked, glancing disgustedly at the two tiny mackerel which represented their afternoon’s sport.
Mr. Morgan roused himself.
“No, old man, those aren’t much to boast about. And I’m afraid we shall have to go in now. The tide’s beginning to run and I expect we could both do with a bit of supper. Let’s change places and you have a go at the lines while I pull in.”
To anyone attempting navigation in the Burry Inlet the tides are a factor of the first importance. With a rise and fall at top springs of something like twenty-five feet, the placid estuary of high water becomes a little later a place of fierce currents and swirling eddies. The Inlet is shallow also. At low tide by far the greater portion of its area is uncovered and this, by confining the rushing waters to narrow channels, still further increases their speed. As the tide falls the great Llanrhidian Sands appear, stretching out northward from the Gower Peninsula, while an estuary nearly four miles wide contracts to a river racing between mud banks five hundred yards apart.
Mr. Morgan took the oars, and heading the boat for the northern coast, began to pull slowly shoreward. He was the manager of a large tinplate works at Burry Port and lived on the outskirts of the little town. Usually a hard worker, he had taken advantage of a slack afternoon
