"
"I believe you, Captain." She looked over the roaring side. Long and
loose and lean, she was lengthening out like a quarter-horse, and he
was singing, but with a puzzling savageness of tone:
"Roll, you hunted slaver
Roll your battened hatches down--"
"Good-night, Captain." She turned to me. She was pale, but 'twas the
pallor of enduring bravery. There was no paling of her dark eyes. Even
darker were they now. "Good-night--" She hesitated. "Good-night, Guy."
"Good-night, Miss Shiela," and I handed her down the companion-way. At
the foot of the stairs she looked up and whispered, "You must take care
of that wound, Guy." And I answered, "No fear," and then her face seemed
to melt away in a mist under the cabin lamp.
Astern of us the dawn leaped up. It had been black night; in a moment,
almost, it was light again. I remembered what Captain Blaise had said of
a sunset in Jamaica; but here it was the other way about--a purple,
round-rimmed dish, and from a segment of it the blood-red salad of a sun
upleaping. And pictured clouds rolling up above the blood-red. And
against the splashes of the sun the tall palm-trees. And in the new
light the signal flambeaux paling. And the white spray of the bar
tossing high, and across the spray the white-belted squadron tacking and
filling futilely.
I grew cold and wondered what was wrong. I dimly saw Captain Blaise come
running to me.
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