CHAPTER XIX
What think you now, sir?” Hartwell asked of Wesley when the latter had descended the stairs and entered the little parlour of the house.
“I am too greatly amazed to think,” replied Wesley. “But since you put thinking into my head, I would ask you if you think it unnatural that a great ebb should follow an unusually high tide?”
It was plain that Hartwell was greatly perturbed.
“Unnatural? Why, has not everything that has happened for the past three days been unnatural?” he cried. “Sir, I am, I thank God, a level-headed man. I have seen some strange things in my life, both in the mines and when seafaring; I thought that naught could happen to startle me, but I confess that this last—I tell you, sir, that I feel now as if I were in the midst of a dream. My voice sounds strange to myself; it seems to come from someone apart from me—nay, rather from myself, but outside myself.”
“'Tis the effect of the heat, dear friend,” said Wesley. “You should have slept as I did.”
“I did sleep, sir; what I have been asking myself is 'Am I yet awake?' I have had dreams before like to this one—dreams of watching the sea and other established things that convey to us all ideas of permanence and regularity, melting away before my very eyes—one dread vision showed me Greta Cliff crumbling away like a child's mound built on the sand—crumbling away into the sea, and then the sea began to ebb and soon was on the horizon. Now, I have been asking myself if I am in the midst of that same dream again. Can it be possible? Can it be possible?”
He clapped his hand to his forehead and hastened to the window, whence he looked out. Almost immediately he returned to Wesley, saying:
“I pray you to inform me, sir, if this is the truth or a dream—is it really the case that the sea has ebbed so that there is naught left of it?”