Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 2).djvu/125

flashed at intervals—there was no other sign of life. Towards six o'clock in the morning the dark east grew grey; thin, long, white rays shot out across the sky, and then the light began to spread. Before the grey turned to pink, or the pink to crimson; before there was any corresponding glow in the western sky, the man who occupied the bungalow turned out of bed, and came forth to the verandah clad in the silk pyjamas and silk jacket, which formed the evening, or dress suit, in which he slept. The increasing light showed that he was a young man still, perhaps about thirty—a young man with a strong and resolute face, and a square forehead. He stood under the verandah watching, as he had done every day for two years and more, the break of day and the sunrise. He drank in the delicious breeze, cooled by a thousand miles and more of ocean. No one knows the freshness and sweetness of the air until he has so stood in the open and watched the dawn of a day in the tropics. He went back to the house and came out again clad in a rough suit of tweeds and a helmet. His servant was waiting for him with his morning tea. He drank it, and sallied forth. By this time the shortlived splendour of the East was fast broadening to right and left, until it stretched from pole to pole. Suddenly the sun leaped up, and the colours fled and the splendour vanished. The sky became all over a deep, clear blue, and round and about the sun was a brightness which no eye but that of the sea bird can face and live. The man in the helmet turned to the seashore, and walked briskly along the sea wall. Now and then he stepped down upon the white coral sand, picked up a shell, looked at it, and threw it away. When he came to the Sea Birds' Rock he sat down,
"Sea Birds' Rock." and watched it. In the deep water below sea snakes, red and purple and green, were playing about; great blue fish rolled lazily round and round the rock; in the recesses lurked unseen the great conger eel, which dreads nothing but the Thing of long and