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Updated: June 27, 2025
Grey wreaths of cloud hung over the tree-tops, and fine rain dripped with a soft, steady patter, as though it would never cease; nor was there another sound, inasmuch as neither horn, nor watchman's cry, nor bell might break the silence, for the sake of the wounded men; nay, even the hounds, meseemed, understood that the daily course of life was out of gear.
But, swiftly as he fled, he felt he was no match for the swift-footed pursuers behind him, and the cry of murder, and the sound of clubs upon the banquette, and the sharp, quick watchman's rattle, fell on his ear more startlingly clear every moment. Suddenly he thought to dart down the first dark street, and at the next block double on his pursuers.
At first the barking of the dogs had drowned very other sound, but as they approached the house thatched with straw, where the wounded men were nursed, harsh voices, interrupted at times by the angry oaths of some patient roused from sleep, or the watchman's command to keep quiet, reached them in a loud uproar.
Immediately after the sunset there had been a great crying of peacocks in the distance, but that was over now; the crickets, however, were still noisy, and a persistent sound had become predominant, an industrious unmistakable sound, a sound that took his mind back to England, in midsummer. It was like a watchman's rattle a nightjar! So there were nightjars here in India, too!
It then occurred to me as possible that the man might have slipped into my rooms; so, lighting my candle at the watchman's, and leaving him standing at the door, I examined them carefully, including the room in which my dreaded guest lay asleep. All was quiet, and assuredly no other man was in those chambers.
Having gossiped to his heart's content, Anton took a stick and struck the night watchman's board, which had hung silent for so many years, and laid down to sleep in the courtyard with no covering on his white head. The May night was mild and soft, and the old man slept sweetly.
Down yonder, towards the place they call Little January, y'know, there's a steep hill that gets wider as it goes down an' there's a gaslamp and a watchman's box where all the cyclists that want to smash their faces, and a few days ago now a navvy comes and sticks himself in there and no one never knew his name, an' he got a cyclist on his head an' he's gone dead.
The bright sunshine made the foam look white and glistening, lighted here and there with colors of the rainbow. The water rumbled and roared as it rushed out of the mill pond. To the left were the flour mill and the village. They could hear the mill wheel turning. They could see a little white church half hidden among the trees. A kingfisher swept by them with a voice like a watchman's rattle.
But it is no use. The librettist is inexorable: the stage is wanted for some one else; and the watchman's song merely acts as a soporific, and at last the poor fellow snores. In the distance appears the ship of the Flying Dutchman "blutroth die Segel, schwarz der Mast" she nears rapidly, enters the fiord and casts anchor hard by Daland's boat, and Vanderdecken comes ashore.
It is lighted by an old-fashioned watchman's lantern hanging from the ceiling; the innumerable pricks and slits in the metal throw a marvellous pattern on the curved wall like some masonry that hasn't been. There are no windows at back, and there is no door save an opening in the floor. The delicately distorted rail of a spiral staircase winds up from below.
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