The moon was all but
full set. The dawn was coming up with a copper murkiness over the edge
of the world. All the stars were yet out. The sea, for all the red moon
and copper dawn, was gray, and there, less than half a mile away, still
lay our consort. I could see her through the portholes with each slow
careening of the _Glarus_.
"I vote for the island," cried Ally Bazan, "shaft or no shaft. We rigs a
bit o' syle, y'know----" and thereat the discussion began.
For upward of two hours it raged, with loud words and shaken
forefingers, and great noisy bangings of the table, and how it would
have ended I do not know, but at last--it was then maybe five in the
morning--the lookout passed word down to the cabin:
"Will you come on deck, gentlemen?" It was the mate who spoke, and the
man was shaken--I could see that--to the very vitals of him. We started
and stared at one another, and I watched little Ally Bazan go slowly
white to the lips. And even then no word of the ship, except as it might
be this from Hardenberg:
"What is it? Good God Almighty, I'm no coward, but this thing is getting
one too many for me."
Then without further speech he went on deck.
The air was cool. The sun was not yet up. It was that strange, queer
mid-period between dark and dawn, when the night is over and the day not
yet come, just the gray that is neither light nor dark, the dim dead
blink as of the refracted light from extinct worlds.
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