Even the unsleeping
sea was silent, the tide low and waveless, no more than a languid ripple
far out upon the shelving sands. All dwelt in calm, in a brooding
tranquillity which might be felt.

Damaris listened to the silence, until her ears began to suspect its
sincerity. Sounds were there in plenty, she believed, were her hearing
sharp enough to detect them. They naughtily played hide-and-seek with
her, striking a chord too deep or too thinly acute for human sense.
Sights were there too, had her eyes but a cat's or an owl's keener
faculty of seeing. Behind the tranquillity she apprehended movement and
action employing a medium, obeying impulses, to us unknown. Restfulness
fled away, but, in place of it, interest grew. If she concentrated her
attention and listened more carefully, she should hear; looked more
steadily, she should see.

Just because she was tired, a little shattered still and spent, did this
predominance of outward nature draw her, imposing itself. It beckoned
her; and, through passing deficiency of will, she followed its beckoning,
making no serious effort to resist. With the consequence she presently
did hear sounds, but sounds surely real and recognizable enough.

Coming from the shore eastwards, below the sea-wall along the river
frontage, ponies walked, or rather floundered, fetlock deep in blown
sand--a whole drove of them to judge by the confused and muffled
trampling of their many hoofs. The drop from the top of the sea-wall to
the beach was too great, and the space between the foot of the wall and
the river-bank and breakwater too confined, for her to see the animals,
even had not oncoming darkness rendered all objects increasingly
ill-defined.

But the confused trampling instead of keeping along the foreshore, as in
all reason it should, now came up and over the sea-wall, on to the
battery, into the garden, heading towards the house, Damaris strained her
eyes through the tranquil obscurity, seeking visible cause of this
advancing commotion, but without effect. Yet all the while, as her
hearing clearly testified, the unseen ponies hustled one another,
plunging, shying away from the swish and crack of a long-thonged whip.
One stumbled and rolled over in the sand.--For although the mob was
half-way up the lawn by now, the shuffling, sliding sand stayed always
with them.--After a nasty struggle it got on to its feet, tottering
forward under savage blows, dead lame. Another, a laggard, fell in