As the moon sinks a ghostly silence prevails. Even the subdued tones of
the sea are hushed. Though I listen with aching intentness no sense of
sound comes to my relief. Thus must it be to be bereft of hearing. This
death-like pause, this awful blank, this tense, anxious lapse, this
pulseless, stifling silence is brief. A frail moan, just audible, comes
from the direction of the vanishing moon. There is a scarcely perceptible
stir in the warm air--a sensation of coming coolness rather than of
motion, and a faint odour of brine. A mile out across the channel a black
band has settled on the shining water.

How entrancing these night-tinted sights and soft sounds! While I loll
and peer and listen I am alert and still, for the primitive passions of
the universe are shyly exercised. To be sensitive to them all the
faculties must be acutely strained. With this lisping, coaxing,
companionable sea the serene and sparkling sky, the glow beyond the
worlds, the listening isles--demure and dim--the air moist, pacific and
fragrant--what concern of mine if the smoky messenger from the stuffy town
never comes? This is the quintessence of life. I am alive at last. Such
keen tingling, thrilling perceptions were never mine before. Now do I
realise the magnificent, the prodigious fact of being. Mine not only a
part in the homely world, but a fellowship with the glorious firmament.

It is night--the thoughtful, watchful, wakeful, guardian night, with no
cloud to sully its tremulous radiance. How pretty a fable, I reflect,
would the ancients have associated with the Southern Cross, shimmering
there in the serene sky! Dare I, at this inspiring moment, attempt what
they missed, merely because they lacked direct inspiration? Those who
once lived in Egypt saw the sumptuous southern jewel, and it may again
glitter vainly for the bewilderment of the Sphinx if the lazy world