The Call of the Blood - Page 74/317

It was dark in the cave and quite warm. The sand made a comfortable bed,

and Delarey was luxuriously tired after the long walk and the wading in

the sea. When he lay down he thought that he, too, would be asleep in a

moment, but sleep did not come to him, though he closed his eyes in

anticipation of it. His mind was busy in his weary body, and that little

cry of a woman still rang in his ears. He heard it like a song sung by a

mysterious voice in a place of mystery by the sea. Soon he opened his

eyes. Turning a little in the sand, away from his companions, he looked

out from the cave, across the sloping beach and the foam of the waves,

to the darkness of trees on the island. (So he called the place of the

siren's house to himself now, and always hereafter.) From the cave he

could not see the house, but only the trees, a formless, dim mass that

grew about it. The monotonous sound of wave after wave did not still the

cry in his ears, but mingled with it, as must have mingled with the song

of the sirens to Ulysses the murmur of breaking seas ever so long ago.

And he thought of a siren in the night stealing to a hidden place in the

rocks to watch him as he drew the net, breast high in the water. There

was romance in his mind to-night, new-born and strange. Sicily had put it

there with the wild sense of youth and freedom that still possessed him.

Something seemed to call him away from this cave of sleep, to bid his

tired body bestir itself once more. He looked at the dark forms of his

comrades, stretched in various attitudes of repose, and suddenly he knew

he could not sleep. He did not want to sleep. He wanted--what? He raised

himself to a sitting posture, then softly stood up, and with infinite

precaution stole out of the cave.

The coldness of the coming dawn took hold on him on the shore, and he saw

in the east a mysterious pallor that was not of the moon, and upon the

foam of the waves a light that was ghastly and that suggested infinite

weariness and sickness. But he did not say this to himself. He merely

felt that the night was quickly departing, and that he must hasten on his

errand before the day came.

He was going to search for the woman who had cried out to him in the sea.

And he felt as if she were a creature of the night, of the moon and of

the shadows, and as if he could never hope to find her in the glory of

the day.