He slept four hours.
Not from choice — from the specific arithmetic of a body that had been working for eighteen hours and had reached the point where continuing to work would produce worse work than stopping briefly would. He lay down on the cot in the harbor master's office at the second hour of the night and was unconscious before he had finished the thought that he should probably remove his boots.
He woke before the sixth hour.
'Four hours,' he thought, sitting up in the dark. 'That should be enough. That is what I am telling myself.'
His boots were still on.
He stood up and went back to the beach.
________________________________________
The beach in the early morning had a different quality than it had the day before.
