Explore "An Awfully Big Adventure" by Bartimeus on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The coastguard was turning over the earth in one of the tiny cabbage patches that belonged to the row of whitewashed cottages on the flank of the headland. The sun was hot and he paused frequently, straightening up and passing the back of his hand across his forehead. Each time he did this his eyes travelled half-mechanically round the blue curve of the horizon, thence along the foreshore, and so back to the cabbage patch, when he resumed his digging.
It was during one of these pauses that he noticed the gulls, and stood motionless for several seconds, shading his eyes from the sun. The tide had turned and left a few yards of sand below high-water mark wet and gleaming in the October sunlight.