Page:C N and A M Williamson - The Lightning Conductor.djvu/278

 and a plain, to be pulled up presently by a very dangerous obstacle—a huge beam of wood, unlighted, and swung across the road to guard a level crossing. Our great acetylene eye, glaring ahead, gave Brown ample warning, and we slowed down, then stopped, while a train thundered past. Very deliberately a signalman presently came to push the barrier aside, and we darted on through a long, straggling village, turned away from the sea, found a large iron gate with a lamp over it, standing hospitably open, and twisting through a fairy-like garden studded with gigantic palms, drew up in a flood of light that poured from the door of a large white hotel. To walk into the big, bright hall, to hear pleasant English voices, to see nice men and pretty girls dressed for dinner and waiting for the stroke of the gong, was an extraordinary contrast to the roaring blackness of the night outside. Everyone turned to stare at us as we came in masked and goggled like divers.

This morning I waked up and looked out of my window a little before seven. It was just sunrise and the wind had died. Under my eyes lay the garden, lovely as Eden, garlands of roses looped from orange trees to palms; banks of heliotrope, and sweetness unutterable. Then, a waving sea of palms, with here and there the glow of a scarlet roof, and beyond the sea. The rising sun shone on it and on the curved line of coast, with Monte Carlo and Mentone gleaming like pearl. Floating up on the horizon I saw a shadowy blue shape of an island, hovering like a ghost, and as I looked it vanished suddenly as a broken bubble, leaving the sea blank.