Kit Musgrave's Luck by Harold Bindloss — Read

The red sunset shone behind Lanzarote's broken hills, and the Trade-wind had, for an hour or two, dropped to a light breeze. _Campeador_'s boat, under jib and spritsail, was beating up the coast. Don Erminio held the tiller; Kit sat on the gunwale and smoked and looked about. Between sea and mountains ran an empty plain, crossed by lava ridges and covered by sand that had blown, for sixty miles, from the Sahara. In the distance, the little whitewashed port of Arrecife glimmered against the dark sea. The landscape was clean-cut and arid. Kit thought it looked like pictures of Palestine.

Rabbits and vividly-coloured fish occupied the bottom of the boat, for Don Erminio was a keen sportsman and made his sport pay. As a rule, his other ventures were not profitable, and he had taken Kit along the coast to look at a new tomato farm, in which he had bought shares. They found a rude wall, enclosing a belt of sand in which Kit imagined nothing could be forced to grow, and the captain stormed about the knavery of the people who had persuaded him to speculate, until he saw a goat. Now, however, he was resigned and philosophical.