noon
I had tramped in wind and rain and the good sunlight over that great desert of pasty black clay at low tide . I had lain at high tide in a sand-pit at the edge of the open sea beyond the dunes , waiting for chance shots at curlew and snipe . I had known the bay at the first glimmer of dawn with a flight of silver plovers wheeling for a rush over my decoys . Dawn -- the lazy , sparkling noon and the golden hours before the crisp , still twilight warned me it was high time to start back to Bar la Rose fourteen kilometres distant . All these had become enchanting memories . Thus going to Pont du Sable for a day 's shooting became a weekly delight , then a biweekly fascination , then an incorrigible triweekly habit . There was no alternative left me now but to live there .