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.