So the _Glarus_ plodded and churned her way onward. Every day and all
day the same pale-blue sky and the unwinking sun bent over that moving
speck. Every day and all day the same black-blue water-world, untouched
by any known wind, smooth as a slab of syenite, colourful as an opal,
stretched out and around and beyond and before and behind us, forever,
illimitable, empty. Every day the smoke of our fires veiled the streaked
whiteness of our wake. Every day Hardenberg (our skipper) at noon
pricked a pin-hole in the chart that hung in the wheel-house, and that
showed we were so much farther into the wilderness. Every day the world
of men, of civilization, of newspapers, policemen and street-railways
receded, and we steamed on alone, lost and forgotten in that silent sea.
"Jolly lot o' room to turn raound in," observed Ally Bazan, the
colonial, "withaout steppin' on y'r neighbour's toes."
"We're clean, clean out o' the track o' navigation," Hardenberg told
him. "An' a blessed good thing for us, too. Nobody ever comes down into
these waters. Ye couldn't pick no course here. Everything leads to
nowhere."
"Might as well be in a bally balloon," said Strokher.
I shall not tell of the nature of the venture on which the _Glarus_ was
bound, further than to say it was not legitimate. It had to do with an
ill thing done more than two centuries ago. There was money in the
venture, but it was not to be gained by a violation of metes and bounds
which are better left intact.
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