They went down once more where they could see nothing but the surf and the sand-hills. The boy had walked far on; they saw his coated and cowled figure swaying with the motion of his walk on the shining beach in front. The tide was at its lowest. What the fishermen had said of it was true: with the wind beating it up it had gone down but a third of its rightful distance; and now the strip that it had to traverse to be full again seemed alarmingly narrow, for a great part of their journey was still to be made. The two men got up on the cart; the boy leaped up when they reached him, before O'Shea could bring it to full stop for him, and on they went. Even the pony seemed to realize that there was need of haste.
They had travelled about two miles more when, in front of them, a cape of rock was seen jutting across the beach, its rocky headland stretching far into the sea. Caius believed that the end of their journey was near; he looked eagerly at the new land, and saw that there were houses upon the top of the cliff. It seemed unnecessary even to ask if this was their destination. Secure in his belief, he willingly got off the cart at the base of the cliff, and trudged behind it, while O'Shea drove up a track in the sand which had the similitude of a road; rough, soft, precipitous as it was, it still bore tracks of wheels and feet, where too far inland to be washed by the waves. The sight of them was like the sight of shore to one who has been long at sea. They went up to the back of the cliff, and came upon its high grassy top; the road led through where small houses were thickly clustered on either side. Caius looked for candle, or fire, or human being, and saw none, and they had not travelled far along the street of this lifeless village when he saw that the road led on down the other side of the headland, and that the beach and the dune stretched ahead of them exactly as they stretched behind.
"Is this a village of the dead?" he asked O'Shea.
The man O'Shea seemed to have in him some freak of perverseness which made it hard for him to answer the simplest question. It was almost by force that Caius got from him the explanation that the village was only used during certain fishing seasons, and abandoned during the winter—unless, indeed, its houses were broken into by shipwrecked sailors, whose lives depended upon finding means of warmth.
The cart descended from the cliff by the same sandy road, and the pony again trotted upon the beach; its trot was deceptive, for it had the appearance of making more way than it did. On they went—on, on, over this wonderful burnished highroad which the sea and the moonlight had laid for their travel. Behind and before, look as they would, they could see only the weird white hills of sand, treeless, almost shadowless now, the seahorses foaming and plunging in endless line, and between them the road, whose apparent narrowing in the far perspective was but an emblem of the truth that the waves were encroaching upon it inch by inch.
CHAPTER V.
DEVILRY.
When the cart and its little company had travelled for almost another hour, a dark object in the midst of the line of foam caught their sight. It was the boy who first saw it, and he suddenly leaned forward, clutching O'Shea's arm as if in fear.