“I did not mean to get tipsy,” went on the other, “but I drank in company with other men, and I forgot. Yes, whisky is a wonderful thing to make you forget for the moment. I remember quite well and quite distinctly the whole of that evening, up to a point. We talked of horse racing—and I knew nothing of horse racing, but it was just as though I knew. It interested me. We talked of other things far worse. I found myself in a billiard room and I was talking to two men and making bets on players and waging money, and then, Kearney, I awoke next morning—I awoke—and there was nothing but a filthy taste on my tongue and the feeling that I had betrayed those I loved—in having forgotten them, if even for a moment.”
“Well, sir, it ain’t much use to a man, and that’s the truth,” said the sailor, tapping the dottle from his pipe.
Then the meeting adjourned, leaving the rising moon to rule the unrippled sea.
The moon was full up when Lestrange, who was asleep in the house, was awakened by a booming sound, measured and rhythmical, that filled the night like the solemn beating of a great drum.
He rose and, passing the sleeping child, came out on the sward.
Kearney was out and standing in the moonlight, shading his eyes and staring towards the sea.
“It’s breakers on the reef, sir!” cried the sailor. “Lord! Look at it!”
Away over the reef the spray was flying to the even-spaced and ever loudening thunder of the great rollers. The reef seemed on fire and fuming under the moon, whilst jets of spume-drift rose like sheeted ghosts from the hurricane seas bursting on the outer beach—rose and dissolved and vanished in an atmosphere windless and still as crystal.
It was the dead calm of the night that made the vision appalling, together with the fact that the anger of the sea was still rising. Above the sheeting spray the gulls were flying wildly in the moonlight, and above their voices louder and louder came the thunder of the breakers.
The woods were now echoing to the sound of it, and now, like a line of crystal above the reef, showed the head of the first beaching wave.