Explore "The Riddle of the Sands" by Erskine Childers on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Nothing disturbed my rest that night, so adaptable is youth and so masterful is nature. At times I was remotely aware of a threshing of rain and a humming of wind, with a nervous kicking of the little hull, and at one moment I dreamt I saw an apparition by candlelight of Davies, clad in pyjamas and huge top-boots, grasping a misty lantern of gigantic proportions. But the apparition mounted the ladder and disappeared, and I passed to other dreams.
A blast in my ear, like the voice of fifty trombones, galvanized me into full consciousness. The musician, smiling and tousled, was at my bedside, raising a foghorn to his lips with deadly intention. "It's a way we have in the Dulcibella," he said, as I started up on one elbow. "I didn't startle you much, did I? " he added.