Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 3, 1895 - Travels and Excursions, Volume II

THE SEA FOGS
A CHANGE in the colour of the Hght usually called
me in the morning. By a certain hour, the long
vertical chinks in our western gable, where the
boards had shrunk and separated, flashed suddenly
into my eyes as stripes of dazzhng blue, at once so
dark and splendid that I used to marvel how the
qualities could be combined. At an earlier hour
the heavens in that quarter were still quietly coloured,
but the shoulder of the mountain which shuts in the
cafion already glowed with sunlight in a wonderful
compound of gold and rose and green ; and this too
would kindle, although more mildly and with rain-
bow tints, the fissures of our crazy gable. If I were
sleeping heavily, it was the bold blue that struck
me awake ; if more lightly, then I would come to
myself in that earher and fairer light.
One Sunday morning, about five, the first bright-
ness called me. I rose and turned to the east, not
for my devotions, but for air. The night had been
very still. The little private gale that blew every
evening in our cafion, for ten minutes or perhaps a
quarter of an hour, had swiftly blown itself out ; in
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