It was a wild night for boat
service; and I felt some alarm mingle with my curiosity as I
reflected on the danger of the landing. My old acquaintance, it
was true, was the most eccentric of men; but the present
eccentricity was both disquieting and lugubrious to consider. A
variety of feelings thus led me towards the beach, where I lay flat
on my face in a hollow within six feet of the track that led to the
pavilion. Thence, I should have the satisfaction of recognising
the arrivals, and, if they should prove to be acquaintances,
greeting them as soon as they had landed.
Some time before eleven, while the tide was still dangerously low,
a boat's lantern appeared close in shore; and, my attention being
thus awakened, I could perceive another still far to seaward,
violently tossed, and sometimes hidden by the billows. The
weather, which was getting dirtier as the night went on, and the
perilous situation of the yacht upon a lee shore, had probably
driven them to attempt a landing at the earliest possible moment.
A little afterwards, four yachtsmen carrying a very heavy chest,
and guided by a fifth with a lantern, passed close in front of me
as I lay, and were admitted to the pavilion by the nurse. They
returned to the beach, and passed me a second time with another
chest, larger but apparently not so heavy as the first. A third
time they made the transit; and on this occasion one of the
yachtsmen carried a leather portmanteau, and the others a lady's
trunk and carriage bag.
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