light had shone there all the evening, for the daylight had not died
till ten, and he was often in bed at that hour. The fishing fleet would
be out again with the dawn if the weather held, or even earlier; and the
hours of sleep were precious.

Down on the rocks on the edge of the sleeping pool a grey shadow lurked
amidst darker shadows. A faint scent of cigarette smoke hung about the
silver beach--a drifting suggestion intangible as the magic of the
night.

Could it have been this faint, floating fragrance that drew the flitting
brown moth by way of the quicksand, swiftly, swiftly, along the moonlit
shore travelling with mysterious certainty, irresistibly attracted?
There was no pause in its rapid progress, though the course it followed
was tortuous. It pursued, with absolute confidence, an invisible,
winding path. And ever the roar of the sea grew louder and louder.

Across the pool, carved in the blackness of the outstretched curving
scimitar of rock, there was a ledge, washed smooth by every tide, but a
foot or more above the water when the tide was out. It was inaccessible
save by way of the pool itself, and yet it had the look of a pathway cut
in the face of the Spear Point Rock. The moonlight gleamed upon its wet
surface. In the very centre of the great curving rock there was a deeper
darkness that might have been a cave.

It must have been after midnight when the little brown figure that had
flitted so securely through the quicksand came with its noiseless feet
over the tumble of rocks that lay about the pool, and the shadow that
lurked in the shadows rose up and became a man.