drinks up a wayside pool; and I fell, and darkness passed over me.

I awoke suddenly as though something had awakened me, and saw that I
was lying on a roughly painted floor, and that on the ceiling, which
was at no great distance, was a roughly painted rose, and about me on
the walls half-finished paintings. The pillars and the censers had
gone; and near me a score of sleepers lay wrapped in disordered
robes, their upturned faces looking to my imagination like hollow
masks; and a chill dawn was shining down upon them from a long window
I had not noticed before; and outside the sea roared. I saw Michael
Robartes lying at a little distance and beside him an overset bowl of
wrought bronze which looked as though it had once held incense. As I
sat thus, I heard a sudden tumult of angry men and women's voices mix
with the roaring of the sea; and leaping to my feet, I went quickly
to Michael Robartes, and tried to shake him out of his sleep. I then
seized him by the shoulder and tried to lift him, but he fell
backwards, and sighed faintly; and the voices became louder and
angrier; and there was a sound of heavy blows upon the door, which
opened on to the pier. Suddenly I heard a sound of rending wood, and
I knew it had begun to give, and I ran to the door of the room. I
pushed it open and came out upon a passage whose bare boards
clattered under my feet, and found in the passage another door which
led into an empty kitchen; and as I passed through the door I heard
two crashes in quick succession, and knew by the sudden noise of feet
and the shouts that the door which opened on to the pier had fallen
inwards. I ran from the kitchen and out into a small yard, and from
this down some steps which descended the seaward and sloping side of
the pier, and from the steps clambered along the water's edge, with
the angry voices ringing in my ears. This part of the pier had been
but lately refaced with blocks of granite, so that it was almost