A moment—and then, flashing, palpitating, leaping like a woman under a burning kiss, the great sea flung her arms up to her lover.
Destroying him utterly and almost in a moment, washing him away, melting him as though he who had been fire had become wax and the wax had been cast into a cauldron of boiling gold. Then, as if millions of infinitely tenuous golden veils were being stripped away with the rapidity of thought, bluer and bluer, darker and darker, appeared the night behind them.
A hand seemed sprinkling and spraying the sky with stars.
One could scarcely say, “It is night,” before night had taken possession of the world and the night-wind was blowing in the palms.
Gaspard, rising, stretched himself and then crept under the shelter of the tent; the opiate of the sea air and his weariness brought sleep at once, profound, dreamless sleep which lasted till just before dawn.
He was awakened by a sound.
Someone close to the tent had, so it seemed to him, struck a single blow on a drum. He raised himself on his arm; sleep had fallen from him like a cloak, and his mind was alert again, and alive to fear.
He listened, but heard nothing except the weary washing sound of the waves on the beach.
Then, as he listened, it came again, but from a distance. Boom! A monstrous sound in that desolate place, alarming and uncanny as the sound of a trumpet.
If it were a drum note, then, judging by the sound, the drum must be of Gargantuan size.