



Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team







MADAME MIDAS

Fergus Hume






PROLOGUE




CAST UP BY THE SEA


A wild bleak-looking coast, with huge water-worn promontories jutting
out into the sea, daring the tempestuous fury of the waves, which dashed
furiously in sheets of seething foam against the iron rocks. Two of
these headlands ran out for a considerable distance, and at the base of
each, ragged cruel-looking rocks stretched still further out into the
ocean until they entirely disappeared beneath the heaving waste of
waters, and only the sudden line of white foam every now and then
streaking the dark green waves betrayed their treacherous presence to
the idle eye. Between these two headlands there was about half a mile of
yellow sandy beach on which the waves rolled with a dull roar, fringing
the wet sands with many  wreaths of sea-weed and delicate
shells. At the back the cliffs rose in a kind of semi-circle, black and
precipitous, to the height of about a hundred feet, and flocks of white
seagulls who had their nests therein were constantly circling round, or
flying seaward with steadily expanded wings and discordant cries. At the
top of these inhospitable-looking cliffs a line of pale green betrayed
the presence of vegetation, and from thence it spread inland into
vast-rolling pastures ending far away at the outskirts of the bush,
above which could be seen giant mountains with snow-covered ranges. Over
all this strange contrast of savage arid coast and peaceful upland there
was a glaring red sky--not the delicate evanescent pink of an ordinary
sunset--but a fierce angry crimson which turned the wet sands and dark
expanse of ocean into the colour of blood. Far away westward, where
the