The Isle of Unrest

by Henry Seton Merriman, 1stworld Library (Editor)

The afternoon sun was lowering towards a heavy bank of clouds hanging still and sullen over the Medite-rranean. A mistral was blowing. The last yellow rays shone fiercely upon the towering coast of Corsica, and the windows of the village of Olmeta glittered like gold. There are two Olmetas in Corsica, both in the north, both on the west coast, both perched high like an eagle's nest, both looking down upon those lashed waters of the Mediterranean, which are not the waters that poets sing of, for they are as often white as they are blue; they are seldom glassy except in the height of summer and sailors tell that they are as treacherous as any waters of the earth. Neither aneroid nor weather-wisdom may, as a matter of fact, tell when a mistral will arise, how it will blow, how veer, how drop and rise, and drop again. For it will blow one day beneath a cloudless sky, lashing the whole sea white like milk, and blow harder to-morrow under racing clouds.

324 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1900

About the author

Hugh Stowell Scott was an English novelist (under the pseudonym of Henry Seton Merriman).

Born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1862, he became an underwriter at Lloyd's of London, but then devoted himself to travel and to writing novels, many of which had great popularity. Scott visited India as a tourist in 1877-8 and set his novel Flotsam (1896) there. He was an enthusiastic traveller, many of his journeys being undertaken with his friend and fellow author Stanley J. Weyman. He was unusually modest and retiring in character. He died of appendicitis at the age of about forty at Melton, Suffolk.