Mr Ramsay had almost done reading. One hand hovered over the pageas if to be in readiness to turn it the very instant he had finished it. He satthere bareheaded with the wind blowing his hair about, extraordinarilyexposed to everything. He looked very old. He looked, James thought,getting his head now against the Lighthouse, now against the waste ofwaters running away into the open, like some old stone lying on thesand; he looked as if he had become physically what was always at theback of both of their minds—that loneliness which was for both of themthe truth about things.

　　He was reading very quickly, as if he were eager to get to the end.

　　Indeed they were very close to the Lighthouse now. There it loomed up,stark and straight, glaring white and black, and one could see the wavesbreaking in white splinters like smashed glass upon the rocks. One couldsee lines and creases in the rocks. One could see the windows clearly; adab of white on one of them, and a little tuft of green on the rock. A manhad come out and looked at them through a glass and gone in again. Soit was like that, James thought, the Lighthouse one had seen across thebay all these years; it was a stark tower on a bare rock. It satisfied him. Itconfirmed some obscure feeling of his about his own character. The oldladies, he thought, thinking of the garden at home, went dragging theirchairs about on the lawn. Old Mrs Beckwith, for example, was alwayssaying how nice it was and how sweet it was and how they ought to beso proud and they ought to be so happy, but as a matter of fact, Jamesthought, looking at the Lighthouse stood there on its rock, it's like that.

　　He looked at his father reading fiercely with his legs curled tight. Theyshared that knowledge. "We are driving before a gale—we must sink," hebegan saying to himself, half aloud, exactly as his father said it.

　　Nobody seemed to have spoken for an age. Cam was tired of lookingat the sea. Little bits of black cork had floated past; the fish were dead inthe bottom of the boat. Still her father read, and James looked at him andshe looked at him, and they vowed that they would fight tyranny to thedeath, and he went on reading quite unconscious of what they thought.

　　It was thus that he escaped, she thought. Yes, with his great foreheadand his great nose, holding his little mottled book firmly in front of him,he escaped. You might try to lay hands on him, but then like a bird, hespread his wings, he floated off to settle out of your reach somewhere faraway on some desolate stump. She gazed at the immense expanse of thesea. The island had grown so small that it scarcely looked like a leaf anylonger. It looked like the top of a rock which some wave bigger than therest would cover. Yet in its frailty were all those paths, those terraces,those bedrooms— all those innumberable things. But as, just beforesleep, things simplify themselves so that only one of all the myriad detailshas power to assert itself, so, she felt, looking drowsily at the island,all those paths and terraces and bedrooms were fading and disappearing,and nothing was left but a pale blue censer swinging rhythmicallythis way and that across her mind. It was a hanging garden; it was a valley,full of birds, and flowers, and antelopes… She was falling asleep.

　　"Come now," said Mr Ramsay, suddenly shutting his book.

　　Come where? To what extraordinary adventure? She woke with astart. To land somewhere, to climb somewhere? Where was he leadingthem? For after his immense silence the words startled them. But it wasabsurd. He was hungry, he said. It was time for lunch. Besides, look, hesaid. "There's the Lighthouse. We're almost there.""He's doing very well," said Macalister, praising James. "He's keepingher very steady."But his father never praised him, James thought grimly.

　　Mr Ramsay opened the parcel and shared out the sandwiches amongthem. Now he was happy, eating bread and cheese with these fishermen.

　　He would have liked to live in a cottage and lounge about in the harbourspitting with the other old men, James thought, watching him slice hischeese into thin yellow sheets with his penknife.

　　This is right, this is it, Cam kept feeling, as she peeled her hard-boiledegg. Now she felt as she did in the study when the old men were readingTHE TIMES. Now I can go on thinking whatever I like, and I shan't fallover a precipice or be drowned, for there he is, keeping his eye on me,she thought.

　　At the same time they were sailing so fast along by the rocks that itwas very exciting—it seemed as if they were doing two things at once;they were eating their lunch here in the sun and they were also makingfor safety in a great storm after a shipwreck. Would the water last?

　　Would the provisions last? she asked herself, telling herself a story butknowing at the same time............