626 



The Review of Reviews. 



Decembtr I, 190S. 



demanded and received a veritable sleeve of collar. 

 I stood outside in the meteor's livid light, hating 

 them and cursing them for having delayed me so 

 long. 



That finished Shaphambury. The question I now- 

 had to debate was, which of the remaining couples 

 I had to pursue. 



I walked back to the parade trying to reason my 

 next step out, and muttering to myself, because 

 there was something in that luminous wonderfulness 

 that touched one's brain, and made one feel a little 

 light-headed. 



One couple had gone to London ; the other had 

 gone to the bungalow village at Bone Cliff. Where, 

 I wondered, w-as Bone Cliff? 



I came upon my wooden-legged man at the top 

 of his steps. 



" Hello :'■ said I. 



He pointed seaward with his pipe ; his silver ring 

 shone in the skylight. 

 " Rum." he said. 

 " What is ?" I asked. 



" Searchlights ! Smoke ! Ships going north ! If 

 it wasn't for this blasted Milky Way gone green 

 up tliere, we might see." 



He was too intent to heed my questions for a 

 time. Then he vouchsafed over his shoulder : 



" Know bungalow village ? — rather. Artis' and 

 such. Nice goings on ! Mixed bathing — something 

 scandalous. Yes." 



"But where is it?" I said, suddenlv exasperated. 

 " There !" he said. " "WTiat's that flicker? A gun- 

 flash — or I'm a lost soul!" 



"You'd hear," I said, "long before it was near 

 enough to see a flash." 



He didn't answer. Only by making it clear I 

 would distract him until he told me what I wanted 

 to know, could I get him to turn from his absorbed 

 contemplation of that phantom dance between the 

 sea rim and the shine. 



" Seven miles." he said. " along this road. And 

 now go to 'ell with yer !" 



I answered with some foul insult by way of 

 thanks, and so we parted, and I set off toward the 

 buncralow village. 



I found a policeman, standing sky-gazing, a little 

 wav bevond the end of the parade. He verified the 

 wooden-legged man's directions. 



'■ It's a lonelv road, vou know,'' he called after 

 me. 



I had an odd intuition that now. at last, I was 

 on the right track. I left the dark masses of Shap- 

 hambury behind me, and pushed out into the dim 

 pallor of that night. 



The incidents of that long tramp I do not recall 

 in any orderly succession. The one progressive thing 

 is mv memory of a growing fatigue. The sea was, 

 for the most part, smooth and shining like a mirror, 

 a great expanse of reflecting silver, barred bv slow, 

 broad undulations; but, at one time, a little breeze 



breathed like a faint sigh and ruffled their long 

 boijies into faint, scaly ripples that never completely 

 died out again. The way was sometimes sandy, 

 thick with silvery, colourless sand, and sometimes 

 chalky and lumpy, with lumps that had shining 

 facets ; a black scrub was scattered, sometimes in 

 thickets, sometimes in single bunches, among the 

 somnolent hummocks of sand. At one place, came 

 grass, and ghostly great sheep looming up among 

 the gray. After a time, black pine woods inter- 

 vened, and made sustained darknesses along the 

 road, woods that frayed out at the edges to weirdly 

 v.arped and stunted trees. Then, isolated pine 

 witches w'ould appear, and make their rigid gestures 

 at me as I passed. Grotesquely incongruous amidst 

 these forms, I presently came on estate boards, ap- 

 pealing, " Houses can be built to suit purchaser," to 

 the silence, to the shadows, and to the glare. 



Once I remember the persistent barking of a dog 

 from somewhere inland of me, and several times 

 I took out and examined my revolver very carefully. 

 I must, of course, have been full of my intention 

 when I did that : I must have been thinking of Net- 

 tie and revenge, but I cannot now recall those emo- 

 tions at all. Only I see again, very distinctly, the 

 greenish gleams that ran over lock and barrel as I 

 turned the weapon in my hand. 



Then there was the sky, the wonderful, luminous, 

 starless, moonless sky, and the empty, blue deeps 

 of the edge of it, between the meteor and the sea. 

 And once— strange phantoms I — I saw far out upon 

 the shine, and ven,' small and distant, three long, 

 black warships, without masts, or sails, or smoke, 

 or any lights, dark, deadly, furtive things, travel- 

 ling very swiftly and keeping an equal distance. 

 And when I looked again they were very small, and 

 then the shine had swallowed them up. 



Then once, a flash, and what I thought was a gun, 

 until I looked up and sa\v a fading trail of greenish 

 light still hanging in the sky. .And after that, there 

 was a shiver and whispering in the air, a stronger 

 throbbing in one's arteries, a sense of refreshment, 

 a renewal of purpose. 



Sornewhere upon my way the road forked, but I 

 do not remember whether that was near Shapham- 

 bury or near the end of my walk. The hesitation 

 between two rutted unmade roads alone remains clear 

 in mv mind. 



At last I grew weary. I came to piled heaps of 

 decaying seaweed and cart tracks, running this wav 

 and that, and then I had missed the road, and' was 

 stumbling among sand hammocks quite close to the 

 sea. I came out on the edge of the dimly glittering 

 sandy beach, and something phosphorescent drew 

 me to the water's edge. I bent down and peered at 

 the little luminous specks that floated in the ripples. 



Presentlv, with a sigh, I stood erect and con- 

 templated the lonelv peace of that last wonderful 

 night. The meteor had now- trailed its shining nets 

 across the whole space of the sky and was beginning 



