CHAPTER XXXIV.
HOW LOVE FOUGHT DEATH IN THE DARK I woke from a very sound sleep with a start, and lay with a creeping of the back and half asleep still, wondering what I had heard.
It was dark, with a blackness of darkness to be felt, and all was very still, which meant that the tide was out, so it was probably early morning.
But it seemed to me that a sound unusual to the place lingered in my ear, and I lay with straining senses.
It was not such a sound, it seemed to me, as Carette might have made in her sleep or in wakening, but something altogether foreign and discordant.
Whether, in my sudden wakening, I had made some sound, I do not know, but there had been heavy silence since.

And in that thick silence and darkness I became aware of another presence in the place besides our own,--by what faculty I know not, but something told me that we were not alone.

My very hair bristled, but I had the sense to lie still, and there was in me a great agony of fear lest Carette should move and draw upon herself I knew not what.
Safety seemed to lie in silence, for I knew that other, whatever it was, was listening as I was.
I held my breath, but my heart was thumping so that it seemed impossible that it should not be heard.

From the place where Carette lay I could not hear a sound, not even the sound of her breathing.
I think I must have burst soon if that state of matters had continued.
Every drop of blood in my body seemed throbbing in my head just back of my ears, and all the rest of me was cold and tense with the strain.

It was like waiting on a fearsome black day of thunder for the storm to break.
Then I heard a movement close to me where I lay on the ground, and, like the lightning out of the thundercloud, there came the click of steel on flint and I breathed soundlessly.