CHAPTER XIS
OMEWHERE on the South Coast, screened from the vulgar by the trap of a huge watering-place, is a long, thin, sandy promontory sticking out to sea, like an innocent rib of wilderness. Here there is no fun of the fair, because there is no fair to provide the fun. There are no taverns, no boarding-houses, no lodgings. One exclusive little hotel rules the extreme tip of the tongue of land in consort with the miniature jetty and quay by which, in late exciting times, strange craft were moored, flying the white ensign and hoar with North Sea brine and deadly secrets. The rest of the spit is peppered with a score of little shy houses, each trying to hide itself from its neighbours, in the privacy of its own sandpit. If your house is on the more desirable side of it, you can look out
