CHAPTER IV.
WHERE THE DEVIL LIVED.
Caius did not know how long he slept. He woke with a sudden start and a presentiment of evil. It was quite dark, as black as starlight night could be; for the foam of the waves hardly glimmered to sight, except here and there where some phosphorescent jelly was tossed among them like a blue death-light. What had wakened Caius was the sound of voices talking ahead of the cart, and the jerk of the cart as it was evidently being driven off the smooth beach on to a very rough and steep incline.
He sat up and strove to pierce the darkness by sight. They had come to no end of their journey. The long beach, with its walls of foam and of dune, stretched on without change. But upon this beach they were no longer travelling; the horse was headed, as it were, to the dune, and now began to climb its almost upright side.
With an imprecation he threw himself out of the cart at a bound into sand so soft that he sank up to the knees and stumbled against the upright side of the hill. The lower voice he had heard was silent instantly. O'Shea stopped the pony with a sharp word of interrogation.
"Where are you going?" shouted Caius. "What are you going to do?"
He need not have shouted, for the wind was swift to carry all sounds from his lips to O'Shea; but the latter's voice, as it came back to him, seemed to stagger against the force of the wind and almost to fail.
"Where are we going? Well, we're going roight up towards the sky at present, but in a minute we'll be going roight down towards the other place. If ye just keep on at that side of the cart ye'll get into a place where we'll have a bit of shelter and rest till the moon rises."
"What is the matter? What are you turning off the road for?" Caius shouted again, half dazed by his sleep and sudden awakening, and wholly angry at the disagreeable situation. He was cold, his limbs almost numb, and to his sleepy brain came the sudden remembrance of the round valleys in the dune of which he had heard, and the person who lived in them.