"The saints protect the Excellency," the
faithful creature added. Then, when Paul was safely in the boat, he stood
back to make sharply three times the sea-bird's cry.
The weird minor notes floating out on the night seemed a wailing echo of
the agonised disappointment in Paul's heart--more than once a mad impulse
to go back convulsed his being before he reached the yacht--but it was not
till afterwards that he remembered as a strange circumstance the fact that
with Dmitry's first words at the nail-studded door Vasili had vanished into
darkness.
CHAPTER XXIX
The two days out at sea were a raging impatience to Paul, in which he
learnt to understand all the torments of Tantalus. To know and feel her
near, and yet not to be allowed to get to her! It was an impossible
cruelty.
The two grey-headed men's hearts ached for him, and Captain Grigsby
delivered himself of this aphorism:
"Say what you will, Charles, but youth pays the devil of a long price for
its pleasures. Here you and I snored like a couple of porpoises all last
night, while the boy paced the deck and cursed everything."
And Sir Charles had only grunted, for he was feeling very deeply for his
son.
There was a fresh breeze blowing when the time was up and they sighted land
again, and long before any possible shore could be examined, Paul
stood--his strongest glasses in his hand--on the look-out.
Pages:
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212