"For Columbus," said Saltash with his most derisive grin, and tossed
Dick's hand away.
CHAPTER X
THE LAST FENCE
A chill breeze sprang up in the dark of the early morning and blew the
drifting fog away. The stars came out one by one till the whole sky shone
and quivered as if it had been pricked by a million glittering
spear-points. The tide turned with a swelling sound that was like a vast
harmony, formless, without melody, immense. And in the state-cabin of the
_Night Moth_, the woman who had knelt for hours by the velvet couch
lifted her face to the open port-hole and shivered.
She had cast her hat down beside her, and the cold night-wind that yet
had a faint hint of the dawn in it ruffled the soft hair about her
temples. Her face was dead-white, drawn with unspeakable weariness, with
piteous lines about the eyes that only long watching can bring. She
looked hopeless, beaten.
The shaded light that gleamed down upon her from the cabin-roof seemed
somehow to hurt her, for after a second or two she leaned to one side
without rising from her knees and switched it off. Then with her hands
tightly clasped, she gazed out over the dim, starlit sea.
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