The red light made a glowing rectangle so bright that the roof was invisible. It had the effect of being suspended high in space, like a phantasmagoric banner of the witches. The outlines of four panes of glass made a black cross upon it.
“The attribute of the apparition.... The aura of youth is red,” said the savant.
I did not stay to take any photographs. I fled.
Like the boy before me, I backed out of the yard, stumbled through the hedge, and then ran. Turning to look back, I saw that the skylight still burned on redly through the branches of the pines.
I spent the night under an old dory on the beach.
CHAPTER XV
BEACH-PLUMS
DID you ever wake up looking at the inside of a boat?
My impulse to sit up came to an abrupt finish with a stunning blow on the head, where the seat struck me across the eyes. I lay blinking at it. The roof of the interior rounded over me securely, resting upon the beach on one gunwale and on the other side leaving a tipped-up opening under which I had crawled. Through this slit I could see waves curling up at the water’s edge and was glad that whoever owned the dory had pulled it well beyond the rising. Had it stood where the tide reached it I would have been under it just the same.
I was wondering how I had come there and why, when two mammoth feet crunched across the sand toward me. Before I had time to slide out of my retreat, great hands turned the dory over and I was gazing into the face of a fisherman. He held a pair of bleached oars under one arm and from his hairy fist dripped a punctured bait-bucket.
“Gosh!” was all he said.