ABSTRACT
It was night. The Kentish coast was bathed in the faint light of the moon, and the waves produced by a slight swell gently lapped the beach. The air was so still that there was scarcely a ripple on the surface of the water. It was the same all along the coast from Whitstable to Portsmouth. The moon shone coldly over this immense tract of coast and dark-blue waste of waters, and there was no sound but the monotonous break of the swell on shingle. A long stretch of shore quite open and undefended, save where a small extent of chalk cliffrose up as a mighty barrier.
