"Ha! ha!" he laughed again, "are you
frightened?" and advancing toward me, he put his face close to mine,
peering into it with bloodshot eyes, while his breath, reeking of
spirits, poured into my nostrils.
Involuntarily I put up my arm to keep him off. He clutched it, and,
pointing with his other hand to the sea, whispered hoarsely, "What do
you hear of the surf? Will the breakers be heavier before sundown? See
how they begin to curve! Listen how they already thunder, thunder,
on the beach! I tell you they are impatient--they seek some one," he
shouted. "Do you know," he continued, lowering his voice again, and
speaking almost confidentially, "sooner or later some one is drowned
upon that bar?" And even as he spoke a fresh line of breakers arose from
the deep, farther out than any had been before. This much I observed,
but I was too greatly unnerved by the strange manner of Jackson to pay
further heed to the sea. It had flashed across my mind that he was on
the verge of an attack of delirium tremens, from the effects of the
liquor he had been consuming for so long, and the problem was to get him
back to the house quietly.
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