Bertrand of Brittany by Warwick Deeping

ONE March day a man wrapped in a heavy riding-cloak with the hood turned back over his shoulders sat looking out over the sea from the cliffs of Cancale. Behind him a shaggy pony was cropping the grass, lifting its head to gaze ever and again at its master, motionless against the gray March sky. A northeast wind blustered over the cliffs, the sea, sullen and venomous, running high about the islands off Cancale. The great waves came swinging in to fly in white clouds of spray over the glistening black rocks that came and went like huge sea-monsters spouting in the water. Across the bay St. Michael's glimmered beneath a chance storm-beam of the sun, while the shores of Normandy were dim and gray between sea and sky.

It was Bertrand, throned like some old Breton saint, with the waves thundering on the rocks beneath him and the gulls wailing about the cliffs. He sat there motionless, fronting the wind, his sword across his knees, as though watching and waiting for some sail he knew would come. The strong and ugly face might have caught the spirit of the granite land. Rock, sea spume, and the storm wind everywhere; a few twisted trees struggling in the grip of the wind. Bertrand, solemn, gray-eyed, motionless, akin to the rocks that lay around.