Читать книгу Lonely Road онлайн

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And presently I took my arm from her, and stopped the car, and got out by the roadside. It was where the road ran not far from the sea; the rain had all gone and left a dusty road; there was a bright moon on the tumbled water and a sound of surf. And as I crossed the field I had a great desire to get where I could see the surf running up the dim line of the beach; on a night like that it would be silvery beneath the moon, with little flashes of bright fire where it drained. All my life I have lived with no other thought than to satisfy my own desires; at that moment I wanted above all things to see the surf breaking on the beach beyond the field, and so I pressed on across the grass.

And presently it seemed to me that I came to a place where the field petered out in sandhills that ran down to the beach, and the line of the surf perhaps two hundred yards away. There was a vessel there anchored very close inshore and black against the moonlight, not quite opposite me but a little way along. From the set of her one-pole mast she might have been a Thames bawley of about fifty tons, or she might have been like the smacks that I have seen in Rotterdam. I only saw her silhouette. There was a dinghy drawn up on the beach opposite her; the surf was very low. And the surf was as I had known that it would be; it was running up the sand around the boat all silvery in the moonlight, with little flashes of bright fire where it drained.