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She could see the lamp-lights on the other side of the Marylebone Road, glimmering redly; and shadowy figures were hurrying past, mostly making their way towards the Edgware Road, to see the Christmas shops. At last to his wife's relief, Bunting got up too. He went over to the cupboard where he kept his little store of books, and took one out. "I think I'll read a bit," he said.
All his senses were on the rack; and yet he could make out absolutely nothing of his whereabouts in this formless void of a world, with its opaque atmosphere, its distant calls, inquiries, warnings, its murky lamp-lights that only became visible when they were over one's head. Miss Burgoyne seemed to be well content, to be amused even. She liked to see her name in the newspapers.
The village houses receded through shifting distances of pale gloom; one could scarcely distinguish the white slants of their roofs, and the lamp-lights which shone out newly in some of the windows made rosy nimbuses. When Jerome drew near his own home he looked eagerly, and saw, with relief, that the white thickness of the storm was suffused with light opposite the kitchen windows.
Amid a press of homeward-going workfolk, Hilliard clambered to a place on the top and lit his pipe. He did not look the same man who had waited gloomily at Dudley Port; his eyes gleamed with life; answering a remark addressed to him by a neighbour on the car, he spoke jovially. No rain was falling, but the streets shone wet and muddy under lurid lamp-lights.
The cluck of their oars was the only sound of any distinctness upon the sea, and as they laboured amid the thickening shades the lamp-lights grew larger, each appearing to send a flaming sword deep down into the waves before it, until there arose, among other dim shapes of the kind, the form of the vessel for which they were bound.
And then athwart this whirling rush of aerial duels that swooped and locked and dropped in the void between the lamp-lights and the stars, came a great wind and a crash louder than thunder, and first one and then a score of lengthening fiery serpents plunged hungrily down upon the Dutchmen's dykes and struck between land and sea and flared up again in enormous columns of glare and crimsoned smoke and steam.
"Be gorra, I'll do my endayvour," said the youth; at the same time instant dashing in both spurs, we rattled down Nassau-street at a very respectable pace for harriers. Street after street we passed, and at last I perceived we had got clear of the city, and were leaving the long line of lamp-lights behind us. The night was now pitch dark. I could not see any thing whatever.
Outside on the platform the brethren are lying at ease under benches, drinking tea, and full of contentment. The gas-jets shine dimly in the rain, and behind the spattered panes of glass the women's eyes gleam like lamp-lights. There is a smell of naphthaline. "Where is the Commandant's carriage?" "No women allowed here! Men only! We're for the front!"
The violent and monotonous noise of the icy waters of the Arve falling over a low dam swept towards us with a chilly draught of air across a great open space, where a double line of lamp-lights outlined a street as yet without houses. But on the other shore, overhung by the awful blackness of the thunder-cloud, a solitary dim light seemed to watch us with a weary stare.
"Be gorra, I'll do my endayvour," said the youth; at the same time instant dashing in both spurs, we rattled down Nassau-street at a very respectable pace for harriers. Street after street we passed, and at last I perceived we had got clear of the city, and were leaving the long line of lamp-lights behind us. The night was now pitch dark. I could not see any thing whatever.
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