An Awfully Big Adventure by Bartimeus — Read

With the turn of the tide the wind backed and swept a wet mist in from the sea. During the day promenaders had thronged the stone pier that partly encircled the deserted harbour; townspeople for the most part -- stolid, sombre-clad folk, taking their constitutionals soberly, as if they formed part of some inflexible schedule that regulated their lives. In the afternoons a sprinkling of infantrymen from the fort intermingled with them; loose-limbed young conscripts in grey uniforms, with heads too small for their bodies -- a phenomenon partly accounted for by the zeal of the garrison barber, and partly by the size of their grotesque boots.

Now, however, as the evening set in with every promise of dirty weather, the promenaders turned in pairs towards the town. The angler who had been fishing in the shelter of the stone beacon slowly wound in his lines, gathered together his paraphernalia, and departed also. A watchman, carrying a short ladder over his shoulder, came and examined the automatic revolving gear of the lantern, and after polishing the reflector, briskly returned to the town, taking his ladder with him.