He shuddered. Even here, two miles away from it, and within a few yards of his comfortable room, with lamps and a fire, and absolute security from the sea, it was not possible to think of that awful Hole unmoved. Although the tide was receding, it was higher than when he and Jim Phelan had been at the Rock. The water had then been flung up a hundred feet into the air. Now, no doubt, it was mounting a hundred and fifty feet--ay, two hundred feet, in a solid, unbroken, bent column! What a hideous fate it would be to stand down on that fatal rock and, with the certainty of immediate destruction, watch that dire column mount up into the air! Ugh! It wasn't a thing to think of just now. He had had enough of the sea and storm for one day. He'd go in and turn up the lamps, and fit himself into an easy-chair in front of the fire, and mix a tumbler of punch and smoke a cigar, and forget all about the confounded sea, except that it was out here foaming and fuming away, wholly unable to get at him.
He looked towards the hotel. The man who had come out of M'Grath's ought by this time to have got within its hospitable walls. No one was to be seen stirring near it.
"Ah, as I thought!" mused O'Brien complaisantly. "But what can they have wanted from M'Grath's at the 'Strand' at this hour of the night? And now that I think of it, the whole male force attached to the house in any capacity consists of old Billy Coyne, the stable man, and myself. I've not been in M'Grath's buying things--that is, at least, not with my knowledge and consent. But then this is a queer place, where queer things happen now and then."
He turned to cross the road, but was again brought to a standstill by a fierce gust of wind and dash of spray. While he was holding on his hat, his face was turned towards the pathway leading to the downs high above. He shook the spray off him, and was on the point of moving away when his eyes caught something moving upward and forward on that path. What the object was he could not determine, for the light was poor and uncertain, and the distance considerable. One moment he thought it was a pony; the next it seemed to resemble a human being. He stood still a minute or two, long enough to make sure he could not come to a conclusion, as the thing continued to recede and the light did not improve.