And it was at this point—as the comparing of notes afterwards established—that Father Norden came in, Norden, the big man’s nephew, having bicycled over from some point beyond Corfe Castle and raced along the hard Studland sand in the moonlight, and then hullood till a boat had ferried him across the narrow channel of Poole Harbour. Sinbad simply brought him in without any preliminary question or announcement. He could not resist the splendid night and the spring air, explained Norden. He felt sure his uncle could “find a hammock” for him somewhere aft, as he put it. He did not add that Sinbad had telegraphed for him just before sundown from the coast-guard hut. Dr. Reese already knew him, but he was introduced to the Major. Norden was a member of the Society of Jesus, an ardent, not clever, and unselfish soul.

Erricson greeted him with obviously mixed feelings, and with an extraordinary sentence: “It doesn’t really matter,” he exclaimed, after a few commonplaces of talk, “for all religions are the same if you go deep enough. All teach sacrifice, and, without exception, all seek final union by absorption into their Deity.” And then, under his breath, turning sideways to peer out of the window, he added a swift rush of half-smothered words that only Dr. Reese caught: “The Army, the Church, the Medical Profession, and Labour—if they would only all come! What a fine result, what a grand offering! Alone—I seem so unworthy—insignificant…!”

But meanwhile young Norden was speaking before anyone could stop him, although the Major did make one or two blundering attempts. For once the Jesuit’s tact was at fault. He evidently hoped to introduce a new mood—to shift the current already established by the single force of his own personality. And he was not quite man enough to carry it off.

It was an error of judgment on his part. For the forces he found established in the room were too heavy to lift and alter, their impetus being already acquired. He did his best, anyhow. He began moving with the current—it was not the first sea fit he had combated in this extraordinary personality—then found, too late, that he was carried along with it himself like the rest of them.

“Odd—but couldn’t find the bungalow at first,” he laughed, somewhat hardly. “It’s got a bit of sea-fog all to itself that hides it. I thought perhaps my pagan uncle—”

The Doctor interrupted him hastily, with great energy. “The fog does lie caught in these sand hollows—like steam in a cup, you know,” he put in. But the other, intent on his own procedure, missed the cue.

“—thought it was smoke at first, and that you were up to some heathen ceremony or other,” laughing in Erricson’s face; “sacrificing to the full moon or the sea, or the spirits of the desolate places that haunt sand-dunes, eh?”

No one spoke for a second, but Erricson’s face turned quite radiant.

“My uncle’s such a pagan, you know,” continued the priest, “that as I flew along those deserted sands from Studland I almost expected to hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn… or see fair Thetis’s tinsel-slippered feet…”