CHAPTER XXIII
The tide reached its full, shortly after two o’clock, and then began to ebb. Almost at once the little waves of the lagoon smoothed out, they lapped no more against the craggy margin, and the water lay like a sheet of gray glass. I had seen the same transformation on several previous occasions, but to-night it seemed to get hold of me as never before.
Seemingly it partook of a miraculous quality to-night—as if winds had been suddenly stilled by a magician’s art. The water was of course flowing out between the crevices of the rock wall, yet there was no sense of motion. The water-line dropped slowly down.
It is an unescapable fact that the whole atmosphere of the Ochakee country is one of death. The moss-draped forests seem without life, the rivers convey no sense of motion, the air is dead, and vegetation rots underfoot. To-night the lagoon was without any image or indication of life. The whole vista seemed like some dead, forgotten wasteland in a dream—a place where living things had never come and was forever incompatible with life.
It was a mysterious hour. The half-crescent moon rose at last, at first a silver tinting of the skyline, a steadily growing wave of light and then the sharply outlined moon itself above the eastern forest. The dark shadows that were my companions took form, strengthened; again I could see their erect figures on the gray crags and the gleam of their rifles in their arms. The perspective widened, the rock wall seemed to extend, stretch ever further across the lagoon, and now the sky was graying in the East.
A moment later I heard Weldon’s voice, ringing full in the hush of the dying night, as he spoke Slatterly’s name. The latter answered at once.
“Yes. What is it?”
“Let’s go in. The night’s over and nothing’s happened. It’s pretty near bright day already.”
It was true that the eastern sky had begun to be tinged with gray. I could see the lines of my hands and the finer mechanisms of the rifle. The hour, however, seemed later than it really was, simply because of the effulgence of the moon. The dread atmosphere of Kastle Krags had in a moment been wholly destroyed. Instead of a place of mystery and peril, it was simply an old-time manor-house fronting the sea, built between the forest and a calm lagoon.
There didn’t seem any use of watching further. If the night was not yet, in fact, completely over, the moon and the graying east gave the effect of morning. Perhaps the fact that the outgoing tide had stilled the lagoon had its effect too. The ominous sound of breaking waves was gone, and it gave a perfect image of quietude and peace.