And still the music
grew louder and louder--and at length came in his face the driving
spray: it was the flying touch of the wings on which the tones went
hurrying past into the depths of awful distance! His feet were now
wading through the bent-tufted sand, with the hard, bare,
wave-beaten sand in front of him. Through the dark he could see the
white fierceness of the hurrying waves as they rushed to the shore,
then leaning, toppling, curling, self-undermined, hurled forth at
once all the sound that was in them in a falling roar of defeat.
Every wave was a complex chord, with winnowed tones feathering it
round. He paced up and down the sand--it seemed for ages. Why he
paced there he did not know--why always he turned and went back
instead of going on.
Suddenly he thought he saw something dark in the hollow of a wave
that swept to its fall. The moon came out as it broke, and the
something was rolled in the surf up the shore. Donal stood watching
it. Why should he move? What was it to him? The next wave would
reclaim it for the ocean! It looked like the body of a man, but what
did it matter! Many such were tossed in the hollows of that music!
But something came back to him out of the ancient years: in the ages
gone by men did what they could! There was a word they used then:
they said men ought to do this or that! This body might not be
dead--or dead, some one might like to have it! He rushed into the
water, and caught it--ere the next wave broke, though hours of
cogitation, ratiocination, recollection, seemed to have intervened.
Pages:
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270