remains a mystery to me why I wasn't drowned. No doubt I would have been
if the light platform hadn't floated like a cork. The bell was ringing
wildly all the time. Every time I went down with the buoy I saw the sky
tilting impossibly over my head, and the wave curling up above me before
it smashed and fell, burying me beneath it."

He became silent, and sat for a long while heavily brooding to himself.
Once or twice he closed his eyes, as though his thoughts were causing
him intolerable pain. I knew that he was living again through all that
racket and nightmare. I didn't say anything; the thunder of the storm
roared too loudly in my head for me to upraise my small voice against
it, or to offer my tiny sympathy to that man whose endurance had been
measured against the elements, and whose standard must be for ever after
raised to the summit of their standard.

He let fall one or two phrases that seemed to open a rift down into the
mirk of his experience, so that I thought I looked for a moment into the
very night that he described:

"I had simply given up hope. I was so weak, you understand. By the time
that night came I was just letting myself be thrown about, anyhow, quite
limp, my head rolling and my arms flacking; I must have looked like
a man in a fit. Whenever I opened my eyes I saw the moon between the
clouds rushing furiously down the sky, and rushing back the other way
as another wave took me up again on its crest. The light of the moon was
just sufficient to light up the rough and tumble of the inky hills of
water. I remember thinking quite stupidly to myself that the moon was a
dead world, and that I envied her for being dead. All this happened to
me," he said, frowning across the table with sudden intentness, "the
week before last."

This mention of human time brought me back with a shock from the
fantastic world to which he had transported me.

"Hallo!" I said, starting as one awakened, and making in my confusion a
ridiculous remark, "it must be getting very late."

Only the ceiling light burnt in the little restaurant, which but for
ourselves was deserted. The stranger leant over towards me, and a shiver
passed over me at the nearness of this man whom I did not know, and to
whose extraordinary experience I had, so to speak, by my own doing, been
made a party. I wanted to put an end to it now, I wanted to say, "Yes, I
have been very much interested. Thank you very much for telling me," and
then to get