The Head was deserted save for the familiar goat tethered outside the coast-guard station. The moon beamed down benignantly on the silver-sabled land, broad-bosomed about him, and the waters stirring far beneath him with a rustle like wind in corn. Then he heard a movement at his back, and turned to see behind him, shabby, collarless, sheepish, the very Working Man of whom he had been thinking.
The Colonel regarded the mystic figure, gigantic in the moonlight, a type rather than an individual, with an interest that was half compassionate and half satirical.
Yes. That was the feller! That was the chap who would take it in the neck! That man with the silly smile—God help him!
"Come to look for it?" he said to the shadow, half to himself—"wiser than your kind?"
"Look for what, sir?"
"The Creeping Death that's stealing across the sea to swallow you and yours."
The shadow sidled towards him.
"Is that you, sir?" a voice said. "I thought it were."
The Colonel emerged from his dream.
"What, Caspar!" he replied. "What are you doing up here at this time of night?"