They don't feel a thing there, Cam thought, looking at the shore, which,rising and falling, became steadily more distant and more peaceful. Herhand cut a trail in the sea, as her mind made the green swirls and streaksinto patterns and, numbed and shrouded, wandered in imagination inthat underworld of waters where the pearls stuck in clusters to whitesprays, where in the green light a change came over one's entire mindand one's body shone half transparent enveloped in a green cloak.

　　Then the eddy slackened round her hand. The rush of the waterceased; the world became full of little creaking and squeaking sounds.

　　One heard the waves breaking and flapping against the side of the boatas if they were anchored in harbour. Everything became very close toone. For the sail, upon which James had his eyes fixed until it had becometo him like a person whom he knew, sagged entirely; there theycame to a stop, flapping about waiting for a breeze, in the hot sun, milesfrom shore, miles from the Lighthouse. Everything in the whole worldseemed to stand still. The Lighthouse became immovable, and the line ofthe distant shore became fixed. The sun grew hotter and everybodyseemed to come very close together and to feel each other's presence,which they had almost forgotten. Macalister's fishing line went plumbdown into the sea. But Mr Ramsay went on reading with his legs curledunder him.

　　He was reading a little shiny book with covers mottled like a plover'segg. Now and again, as they hung about in that horrid calm, he turned apage. And James felt that each page was turned with a peculiar gestureaimed at him; now assertively, now commandingly; now with the intentionof making people pity him; and all the time, as his father read andturned one after another of those little pages, James kept dreading themoment when he would look up and speak sharply to him aboutsomething or other. Why were they lagging about here? he would demand,or something quite unreasonable like that. And if he does, Jamesthought, then I shall take a knife and strike him to the heart.

　　He had always kept this old symbol of taking a knife and striking hisfather to the heart. Only now, as he grew older, and sat staring at hisfather in an impotent rage, it was not him, that old man reading, whomhe wanted to kill, but it was the thing that descended on him—withouthis knowing it perhaps: that fierce sudden black-winged harpy, with itstalons and its beak all cold and hard, that struck and struck at you (hecould feel the beak on his bare legs, where it had struck when he was achild) and then made off, and there he was again, an old man, very sad,reading his book. That he would kill, that he would strike to the heart.

　　Whatever he did—(and he might do anything, he felt, looking at theLighthouse and the distant shore) whether he was in a business, in abank, a barrister, a man at the head of some enterprise, that he wouldfight, that he would track down and stamp out—tyranny, despotism, hecalled it—making people do what they did not want to do, cutting offtheir right to speak. How could any of them say, But I won't, when hesaid, Come to the Lighthouse. Do this. Fetch me that. The black wingsspread, and the hard beak tore. And then next moment, there he satreading his book; and he might look up—one never knew—quite reasonably.

　　He might talk to the Macalisters. He might be pressing a sovereigninto some frozen old woman's hand in the street, James thought, and hemight be shouting out at some fisherman's sports; he might be wavinghis arms in the air with excitement. Or he might sit at the head of thetable dead silent from one end of dinner to the other. Yes, thought James,while the boat slapped and dawdled there in the hot sun; there was awaste of snow and rock very lonely and austere; and there he had cometo feel, quite often lately, when his father said something or didsomething which surprised the others, there were two pairs of footprintsonly; his own and his father's. They alone knew each other. What thenwas this terror, this hatred? Turning back among the many leaves whichthe past had folded in him, peering into the heart of that forest wherelight and shade so chequer each other that all shape is distorted, and oneblunders, now with the sun in one's eyes, now with a dark shadow, hesought an image to cool and detach and round off his feeling in a concreteshape. Suppose then that as a child sitting helpless in a perambulator,or on some one's knee, he had seen a waggon crush ignorantly andinnocently, some one's foot? Suppose he had seen the foot first, in thegrass, smooth, and whole; then the wheel; and the same foot, purple,crushed. But the wheel was innocent. So now, when his father camestriding down the passage knocking them up early in the morning to goto the Lighthouse down it came over his foot, over Cam's foot, overanybody's foot. One sat and watched it.