and the waves looked dark and shadowy; the silence grew more intense.
I turned on one side to go to sleep, and then once more came a sad,
despairing human cry as of a lost child. I sat bolt upright and looked
about me, and even then, whilst I stared, the cry came again, and
from the sea. "Is it possible there is a child down by the waves?" I
thought, and I tried to distinguish some little human shape in the
darkness that seemed hastening on the shoulders of the incoming waves.
There came a terrible wail and another silence. I dared not go and
search, but I lay and shuddered and felt terribly lonely. The waves
followed one another and followed again, ever faster and faster as it
seemed in the darkness--

Still on each wave followed the wave behind,
And then another behind,
And then another behind....

They came forward fantastically, and I felt as if I were lying in the
presence of something most ancient, most terrible.

Presently a bird with great dark wings flew noiselessly just over my
head, and then over the sea rose the moon, young, new drest, and I
forgot the strange cry in the presence of a familiar friend. It was as
if a light had been brought into one's bedroom. Probably the cry was
that of an owl; it came no more. I slept.


V

There was my walk to the forlorn and lonely monastery of Pitsoonda on
the promontory where the great lighthouse burns. Along the seashore