Arthur Gask 
Cloud, the Smiter 

One beautiful summer’s evening a young man was bicycling slowly along the Military Road that runs between the great Outer Harbour of South Australia and Glenelg. The road was one very seldom used and wound a lonely, sinuous way among the sandhills by the sea.

 

Dusk had just fallen and the young man was riding slowly and anxiously along. He was not anxious because the surface of the road was shockingly uneven and bad, but he was troubled because he was riding without a light.

 

He had not expected to be out so late and there was no oil in his lamp. He had ridden out from Adelaide early that afternoon fully intending to be back long before night had fallen, but twice he had had trouble with his tyres, and dusk had now caught him seven miles at least from the city and on a road that was quite unknown to him.