"What sort of things grow here?" asked Caius, pawing the ground with his foot.
He could not quite get over the inward impression that the mountainous-looking region of the dune over against them was towered with infernal palaces, so weird was the place.
O'Shea's voice came out of the darkness; his form was hardly to be seen.
"Sit yourself down, Mr. Doctor, and have some bread and cheese—that is, if ye've sufficiently forgotten the poies of the old maids. The things that grow here are good enough to sit on, and that's all we want of them, not being ponies."
The answer was once more an insult in its allusion to the pies (Caius was again hungry), and in its refusal of simple information; but the tone was more cheerful, and O'Shea had relaxed from his extreme brevity. Caius sat down, and felt almost convivial when he found that a parcel of bread and cheese and a huge bottle of cold tea were to be shared between them. Either the food was perfect of its kind or his appetite good sauce, for never had anything tasted sweeter than the meal. They all three squatted in the darkness round the contents of the ample parcel, and if they said little it was because they ate much.
Caius found by the light of a match that his watch told it was the hour of seven; they had been at hard travel for more than four hours, and had come to a bit of the beach which could not be traversed without more light. In another hour the moon would be up and the horse rested.
When the meal was finished, each rested in his own way. O'Shea laid himself flat upon his back, with a blanket over his feet. The boy slipped away, and was not seen until the waving grass on the tops of the highest dunes became a fringe of silver. Until then Caius paced the valley, coming occasionally in contact with the browsing pony; but neither his walk nor meditation was interrupted by more formidable presence.
"Ay—ee—ho—ee—ho!" It was a rallying call, a shrill cry, from O'Shea. It broke the silence the instant that the moon's first ray had touched the dune. The man must have been lying looking at the highest head, for when Caius heard the unexpected sound he looked round more than once before he discovered its cause, and then knew that while he had been walking the whole heaven and earth had become lighter by imperceptible degrees. As he watched now, the momentary brightening was very perceptible. The heights and shadows of the sand-hills stood out to sight; he could see the line where the low herbage stopped and the waving bent began. In the sky the stars faded in a pallid gulf of violet light. The mystery of the place was less, its beauty a thousandfold greater: and the beauty was still of the dream-exciting kind that made him long to climb all its hills and seek in all its hollows, for there are some scenes that, by their very contour, suggest more than they display, and in which the human mind cannot rid itself of the notion that the physical aspect is not all that there is to be seen. But whatever the charm of the place, now that light had revealed it Caius must leave it.
The party put themselves in line of march once more. The boy had gone on up where the wall of the dell was lowest, and Caius tramped beside O'Shea, who led the pony.
Once up from the hollow, their eyes were dazzled at first with the flash of the moonlight upon the water. From the top of the sand ridge they could see the sea out beyond the surf—a measureless purple waste on which far breakers rose and blossomed for a moment like a hedge of whitethorn in May, and sank again with a glint of black in the shadow of the next uprising.