Adam turned about.  “I’ll go and knock up Rufus,” he decided.  “It’d be a shame to miss a night like this.”

Again the lightning rent the sky, and the whole great outline of the Spear Point was revealed in one awful second of intolerable radiance.  Adam’s keen eye chanced to be upon it, and he saw it in such detail as the strongest sunlight could never have achieved.  The brightness dazzled, almost shocked him, but there was something besides the brightness that sent an odd sensation through him—­a curious, sick feeling as if he had suddenly received a blow between the shoulders.  For in that fraction of time he had seen something which reason, clamouring against the evidence of his senses, declared to be the impossible.  He had seen a human figure—­the figure of his son—­clinging to the naked face of the rock, hanging between sea and sky where scarcely a bird could have found foothold, while something—­a grey, indistinguishable burden—­hung limp across his shoulder, weighing him down.

The thunder was still rolling around him when with a great shake Adam pulled himself together.

“I’m dreaming!” he told himself angrily.  “A man couldn’t ever climb the Spear Point, let alone live on a ledge that wouldn’t harbour a sea-gull if he did.  I’ll go round to Rufus.  I’ll go round and knock him up.”

With the words he tramped off through the rushing rain, and leaving the quay, struck upwards along the cliff in the direction of the narrow path that ran down to Rufus’s dwelling above the Spear Point Caves.

Despite the spareness of his frame, he climbed the ascent with a rapidity that made him gasp.  The wind also was against him, blowing in strong gusts, and the raging of the sea below was as the roaring of a thousand torrents.  The great waves boomed against the cliff far beyond the summer watermark.  They had long since covered the quicksand, and he thought he felt the ground shake with the shock of them.

He reached at length the gap in the cliff that led down to the cottage, and here he paused; for the descent was sharp, and the light that still filtered through the dense storm-clouds was very dim.  But in a few seconds another great flash lit up the whole wild scene.  He saw again the Spear Point Rock standing out, scimitar-like, in the sea.  The water was dashing all around it.  It stood up, grim and unapproachable, the great waves flinging their mighty clouds of spray over its stark summit.  But—­possibly because he viewed it from above instead of from below—­he saw naught beside that grand and futile struggle of the elements.

Reassured, he started in the rain and darkness down the twisting path that led to his old home.  He knew every foot of the way, but even so, he stumbled once or twice in the gloom.

The roaring of the sea sounded terribly near when finally he reached the little garden-gate and caught the ray of the lamp in the window.

Evidently it had awakened Rufus also.  Almost unconsciously he quickened his pace as he went up the path.