Continued from Part III:
So uneventful has this last week been, I had hopes of putting aside these papers forever, and ascribing to the temporary insanity of isolation my nightmare; but events have transpired of such abnormality, and which have made such a confusion of my thoughts, I find I must once again parse them in writing.
Having finished reading a difficult paper by one of my colleagues, and feeling quite at my ease, I set out four nights ago for a midnight stroll along the shore. It was a mild night for the season, and the moon shone bright and strong, its reflection making a broken pathway over the water to the very tipping point of the horizon; one could almost fancy on such a night, that to walk across to Michigan was no great feat. And yet, how many have lost their lives on that treacherous road!
I was entertaining my brain with this fancy when, in the very spot at which I looked, a light appeared, quite as though someone had just arrived home and turned on the lamp in their living room; yet this was in the middle of the lake. At first I supposed it was a plane, and that I would shortly see it rise, yet it stayed put and, after all, its glow was too soft, too reminiscent of a candle flame.
You may well imagine how I winked and squinted and rubbed my eyes, fancying this would dispel the vision—how I turned my gaze elsewhere, hoping the apparition would appear a mere fault in my retina—but it stayed put, exactly where I first beheld it.
Two impulses wrestled within me, reason and instinct. Reason said, this is a mere weather phenomenon, such as you have read countless times described, while instinct, in a groundswell beneath my consciousness, declared: This is a boat, signaling for help.