The professor continued to write.
“Good-night,” said Colton.
“Good-night, Dr. Colton,” said the scientist quietly, “and thank you again. By the way, there is no wire of any kind within half a mile of where we stood.”
Two problems Dick Colton took with him as exorcisers of the processional medicine bottles, when he threw himself on his bed and closed his eye. It was not the sound in the darkness, however, but the face in the light that prevailed as he dropped to sleep.
CHAPTER TWO
THE VOICE IN THE NIGHT
BEFORE the dream had fairly enchained him Colton was buffeted back to consciousness by a slamming of doors and a general bustling about in the house. He sat up in bed, and looked out over the ocean just in time to see a fiery serpent writhe up through the blackness and thrust into the clouds a head which burst into wind-driven fragments of radiance, before the vaster glory of the lightning surrounded and wiped it out.
“A wreck, I fear,” said Professor Eavenden in the hall outside. “I shall go down to the shore, in case I can be of assistance.”
“Indeed you shall not!” came a quick contradiction from the room at the end of the hall. “Not until I’m ready to go with you.”
It was the voice of the Vision. Colton observed that, soft as the tones were, a certain quality of decisiveness inhered in them.
“Can’t Mr. Haynes bring you?” suggested the professor mildly. “I see a light in his room.”