At first he felt that he was courting certain death by keeping the word he had given; in the clap of the waves he seemed to hear the pistol-shot that was to be his doom, or the knife-like breath of the wind seemed the dagger in the hand of a following murderer.

But as he went on and no evil fate befell, his fear died, and only curiosity remained--a curiosity so lively that it fixed eagerly upon the stretch of the surf behind him, upon his own footsteps left on the soft sand, upon the sand-hills that he had passed, although they were almost the same as the sand-hills that were before.

It would have been a positive joy to him to turn and look at any of these things.

While his mind dwelt upon it, he almost grudged each advancing step, because it put more of the interesting world into the region from which he was shut out as wholly as if a wall of separation sprang up between the behind and before.
By an effort of will he turned his thought from this desire, or from considering what the mysterious something could be that it was all-important for him not to see, or who it was that in this desolate place would spy upon him if he broke his vow.
When his activity had set the blood again coursing warmly in his veins, all that was paltry and depressing passed from his mind and heart, as a mist is rolled away by the wind.

The sweet, wild air, that in those regions is an elixir of life to the stranger, making him young if he be old, and if he be young making him feel as demigods felt in days of yore, for a day and a night had been doing its work upon him.