CHAPTER III
WATER THAT TAKES YOUR BREATH
Mr. Puddlebox's landsman's eye showed him no signs of that "blowing up dirty" of which he had been informed. A fresh breeze faced him as he walked and somewhat hindered his progress; but a strong moon rode high and lighted him; the sea, much advanced since he came that way, broke quietly along the shore. "Why, it's none so bad a night to be out," thought Mr. Puddlebox; and there began to change within him the mood in which he had left the lodging-house. Seated there he had imagined a rough night, wet and dark, and with each passing hour had the more reproached himself for his desertion of his loony. Now that he found night clear and still, well-lit and nothing overcold, he inclined towards considering himself a fool for his pains.
An hour on his road brought change of mood again. The very stillness, the very clearness that first had reassured him, now began to frighten him. He began to apprehend as it were a something sinister in the quietude. He began to dislike the persistent regularity of his footsteps grinding in the deep shingle and to dislike yet more the persistent regularity of the breaking waves. They rose about knee-high as he watched them, fell and pressed whitely up the beach, back slowly, as though reluctant and with deep protest of the stones, then massed knee-high and down and up again. Darkly on his right hand the steep cliffs towered.
The monotony of sound oppressed him. He began to have an eerie feeling as though he were being followed, and once or twice he looked back. No, very much alone. Then his footsteps, whose persistent regularity had wrought upon his senses, began to trouble him with their noisiness upon the shingle. He tried to walk less heavily and presently found himself picking his way, and that added to the eeriness, startling him when the loose stones yielded and he stumbled.
He approached that quarter where the shore began to be divided by the rocky barriers that ran from cliff to sea. Then he apprehended what, as he expressed it to himself, was the matter with the sea. It was very full. It looked very deep. What had seemed to him to be waves rolling up now appeared to him as a kind of overflowing, as though not spurned-out waves, but the whole volume of the water welled, swelled, to find more room. The breaking sound was now scarcely to be heard, and that intensified the stillness, and that frightened him more. He began to run....
Mr. Puddlebox stopped running for want of breath; but that physical admission of the mounting panic within him left him very frightened indeed. He went close to the cliffs. Darker there and very shut-up the way they towered so straight and so high. He came away from them, his senses worse wrought upon. Then he came to the first of the rocky barriers that ran like piers from the cliff to the sea, and then for the first time noticed how high the tide had risen. When he came here with Mr. Wriford they had done their climbing far from the cliff's base. Now the barrier was in great part submerged. He must climb it near to the cliff where climbing was steeper and more difficult. Well, there was sand between these barriers, that was one good thing. Walking would be easier and none of that cursed noise that his feet made on the shingle. With much difficulty he got up and looked down upon the other side....
There wasn't any sand. Water where sand had been—water that with that welling, swelling motion pressed about the shingle that banked beneath the cliff.
Mr. Puddlebox said aloud, in a whisper: "The tide!" It was the first time since he had started out that he had thought of it. He looked along the cliff. From where he stood, from where these rocky piers began, the cliff, as he saw, began to stand outwards in a long bluff. The further one went, the further the tide would.... He carried his eyes a little to sea. Beneath the moon were white, uneasy lines. That was where the sea swirled upon the barriers. He looked downwards and saw the placid water welling, swelling beneath his feet.
"The tide," said Mr. Puddlebox again, again in a whisper. He swallowed something that rose in his throat. He ran his tongue around his lips, for they were dry. He shivered, for the perspiration his long walk had induced now seemed to be running down his body in very cold drops. He looked straight above him and at once down to his feet again and moved his feet in steadying of his balance: a sense of giddiness came from looking up that towering height that towered so steeply as to appear hanging over him. He looked along the way he had come; and he stood so close to the cliff-face, and it bulked so enormously before him, that the bay he had traversed seemed, by contrast, to sweep back immensely far—immensely safe.