This filled them with doubt--uneasy doubt. Owing to the darkness and the nature of the remote light, they could not form an exact notion of its position, but they guessed it to be no less than a mile from the Red Gap, and, allowing for everything, that would be the back of the Black Rock.
Why should there be a light at the back of the Black Rock? How could a light be accounted for there? except it was a corpse-candle on that murderous reef.
It was a thought to shudder at.
With the other two men the effect was wholly different. Neither had ever been in this marvellous place before; neither had seen its sights, or heard its sounds, or endured its darkness until now, and their imaginations had been powerfully excited and exercised. At one time they were exalted by the visible--at another overawed by the unseen. Sobriety of thought and familiarity of experience were absent, and they were face to face with things undreamed of and enormous, and with phantoms and monstrous ideas that baffled investigation and pursuit.
But to them the mention of the Black Rock meant the re-entry of ordinary ideas and homely thoughts. It lay out there in the noonday sunlight beside the sunlit sea. It was part of the pastoral land where people sang and trees waved their leaves and winds bore perfumes. There was nothing more disquieting about it than about a ship, or a house, or a rampart.
O'Brien's thoughts had now gone back to their ordinary course. If this light came from anywhere near the Black Rock, might it not have something to do with the Puffing Hole?
The question was fascinating, alluring. It might prove a beacon to discovery.
"Where do you think it is from, Phelan?" he asked, in a whisper.
"Somewhere near the Black Rock. I can't say exactly where."
"What do you believe it is?"