down the other track, stopped, rose, and
creeping slowly to the middle of the road, spread into a second gleaming
patch. They grew, met--and the road for a hundred feet was covered with
the bay.

As the crimson paled into smoky pearl, the blue changed green and gold,
and big at the edge of the marsh showed the rim of the moon.

Weird hour! Sunset, moonrise, flood-tide, and twilight together weaving
the spell of the night over the wide waking marsh. Mysterious, sinister
almost, seemed the swift, stealthy creeping of the tide. It was
surrounding and crawling in upon me. Already it stood ankle-deep in the
road, and was reaching toward my knees, a warm thing, quick and moving. It
slipped among the grasses and into the holes of the crabs with a smothered
bubbling; it disturbed the seaside sparrows sleeping down in the sedge and
kept them springing up to find new beds. How high would it rise? Behind me
on the road it had crawled to the foot of the dune. Would it let me
through to the mainland if I waited for the flood?

It would be high tide at nine o'clock. Finding a mound of sand on the
shore that the water could hardly cover, I sat down to watch the
tide-miracle; for here, surely, I should see the wonder worked, so wide
was the open, so full, so frank the moon.

In the yellow light I could make out the line of sentinel trees across the
marsh, and off on the bay a ship, looming dim in the distance, coming on
with wind and tide. There were no sounds except the long regular wash of
the waves, the stir of the breeze in the chafing sedges, and the creepy
stepping of the water weaving everywhere through the hidden paths of the
grass. Presently a night-hawk began to flit about me, then another and
another, skimming just above the marsh as silent as the shadows. What was
that? Something moved across the moon. In a moment, bat-like and huge
against the great yellow disk, appeared a marsh-owl. He was coming to look
at me. What was I that dared remain abroad in the marsh after the rising
of the moon? that dared invade this eery realm, this night-spread,
tide-crept, half-sealand where he was king? How like a goblin he seemed! I
thought of Grendel, and listened for the splash of the fen-monster's steps
along the edge of the bay. But only the owl came. Down, down, down he
bobbed, till I could almost feel the fanning of his wings. How silent! His
long legs hung limp, his body dangled between those soft wide wings within
reach of my fa