about
midnight
Out over the waste of heaving water , where the moonbeams turned the small rippling waves to the resemblance of netted links of silver or steel , the horizon stretched sharply clear and definite , like a line drawn under the finished chapter of vision . There was a gentle murmur of the inflowing tide among the loose stones and pebbles fringing the beach , -- but to Helmsley 's ears it sounded like the miserable moaning of a broken heart , -- the wail of a sorrowful spirit in torture . He went on and on , with no very distinct idea of where he was going , -- he simply continued to walk automatically like one in a dream . He did not know the time , but guessed it must be somewhere about midnight . The road was quite deserted , and its loneliness was to him , in his present over-wrought condition , appalling . Desolation seemed to involve the whole earth in gloom , -- the trees stood out in the white shine of the moon like dark shrouded ghosts waving their cerements to and fro , -- the fields and hills on either side of him were bare and solitary , and the gleam of the ocean was cold and cheerless as a `` Dead Man 's Pool . '' Slowly he plodded along , with a thousand disjointed fragments of thought and memory teasing his brain , all part and parcel of his recent experiences , -- he seemed to have lived through a whole history of strange events since the herb-gatherer , Matt Peke , had befriended him on the road , -- and the most curious impression of all was that he had somehow lost his own identity for ever .