I walked with downcast head, without thought, almost without sensation, but
utterly buried in myself. A rhythmic hollow and angry noise raised me from
my numbness. I lifted my head; it was the sea roaring and moaning fifty
paces from me. I saw I was walking along the sand of the dunes. The sea,
set in violent commotion by the storm in the night, was white with foam to
the very horizon, and the sharp crests of the long billows rolled one after
another and broke on the flat shore. I went nearer to it, and walked along
the line left by the ebb and flow of the tides on the yellow furrowed sand,
strewn with fragments of trailing seaweed, broken shells, and snakelike
ribbons of sea-grass. Gulls, with pointed wings, flying with a plaintive
cry on the wind out of the remote depths of the air, soared up, white as
snow against the grey cloudy sky, fell abruptly, and seeming to leap from
wave to wave, vanished again, and were lost like gleams of silver in the
streaks of frothing foam. Several of them, I noticed, hovered persistently
over a big rock, which stood up alone in the midst of the level uniformity
of the sandy shore. Coarse seaweed was growing in irregular masses on one
side of the rock; and where its matted tangles rose above the yellow line,
was something black, something longish, curved, not very large.... I looked
attentively.... Some dark object was lying there, lying motionless beside
the rock.... This object grew clearer, more defined the nearer I got to
it....
There was only a distance of thirty paces left between me and the rock....
Why, it was the outline of a human form! It was a corpse; it was a drowned
man thrown up by the sea! I went right up to the rock.
The corpse was the baron, my father! I stood as though turned to stone.
Only then I realised that I had been led since early morning by some
unknown forces, that I was in their power, and for some instants there was
nothing in my soul but the never-ceasing crash of the sea, and dumb horror
at the fate that had possession of me....