Nothing could she see, however, except the sea whining and straining from the wind and snow, and casting up its giant belly to the stars like some impotent god of emptiness and fury frothing its threats against the universe. Again her eyes embraced this chaos, but only a lightship could she see swaying many a mile away; the light upon it seemed to hang above a chasm on the very margin of the world. The night had now pierced her to the blood, while the upthrown surf had stung her face so bitterly that she could support its devilries no more. The landlord, in his wisdom, had not advanced beyond the shelter of the rocks; but the lantern that the woman bore was much his friend, and now at last the tardy moon showed signs of bursting through the wrack that forever raced across it. To him the lady’s movements were therefore made excellently plain; their very visibility, however, did but render her motives the more obscure. After a little while the landlord saw her turn her back upon the black waste of roaring winds and waters, and retrace her steps near to where he crouched encumbered in shingle and rank grass. He crept the closer into secrecy, so that presently she walked so closely past him that in her unconsciousness the hem of her cloak nearly brushed his feet. By the time the woman had gone some yards beyond him, the landlord got upon his legs and followed her with the same precaution as before. To his bewilderment, and untold annoyance too, instead of pressing directly back upon the path leading to the inn, as he had calculated that she would, she began swiftly to ascend one of the beetling faces of the rocks. The landlord put the stern question to himself whether he should attempt to follow her. The rocks, as he was well aware, were at this point of no particular height, nor were they very difficult or steep. But even in broad daylight they called for an effort from a man in years ambitious to ascend them. Curiosity, however, had its tentacles upon the landlord’s soul; it insensibly drew him panting, groaning, and stumbling up the cliff in the wake of the woman, even as he debated the matter in his mind. The god of circumstance was stronger than he. The landlord tore his hands on the sharp fragments that studded the face of the rocks; he tripped over others that lay concealed. He barked his shins, tore his clothes, bruised his body; but where the woman with the lantern went, he went to. In the teeth of the gale she won her way up to the pinnacle. The uncertain flame in the lantern blinked and tottered in her hand; but, like its bearer, it somehow prevailed intrepidly against the gale. Once more her eyes were for the sea; and as they confronted it even more steadfastly than before, the moon suddenly swam forth from a black patch of storm, and painted the tense lines of her form in a weird grey ghostliness. It even fell upon her face, and betrayed it wilder and more sombre than the night itself.