It did not check his progress; he was never one to be easily daunted. It
was contrary to his very nature to seek shelter in a storm. He went
swinging on to the very edge of the quay, and there stood facing the
violence of the waves, the fierce turmoil of striving elements.

The tide was extraordinarily high--such a tide as he believed he had
never seen before in summer. He stood in the pouring rain and looked
first one way, then the other, with a quick birdlike scrutiny, but as
far as his eyes could pierce he saw only an empty desolation of waters.
There seemed none in need of his help that night.

"I wonder if Rufus is awake," he speculated to the angry tumult.

Nearly three miles out from the Spear Point there was a lighthouse with
a revolving light. That light shone towards him now, casting a weird
radiance across the tossing water, and as if in accompaniment to the
warning gleam he heard the deep toll of the bell-buoy that rocked upon
the swell.

Adam turned about. "I'll go and knock up Rufus," he decided. "It'd be a
shame to miss a night like this."

Again the lightning rent the sky, and the whole great outline of the
Spear Point was revealed in one awful second of intolerable radiance.
Adam's keen eye chanced to be upon it, and he saw it in such detail as
the strongest sunlight could never have achieved. The brightness
dazzled, almost shocked him, but there was something besides the
brightness that sent an odd sensation through him--a curious, sick
feeling as if he had suddenly received a blow between the shoulders. For
in that fraction of time he had seen something which reason, clamouring