Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel by Will Levington Comfort
page 11 of 413 (02%)
page 11 of 413 (02%)
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was; that their sailing together was done.... A sympathetic disorder
was brewing deep down on the ocean floor; the water now had a charged appearance, and was foul as the roadstead along the mouths of the Godivari--a thick, whipped, yeasty look. The changes were very rapid. Every few seconds, Bedient glanced at the Captain, and as often followed his gaze into the churning, blackening North. A chill came into the deathly heat, but it was the cold of caverns, not of the vital open. The heat did not mix with it, but passed by in layers--a novel movement of the atmospheres. Had the coolness been clean and normal, the sailors would have sprung to the rigging to breathe it, and to bare their bodies to the rain--after two days of hell-pervading calm--but they only murmured now and fell to work. An unearthly glitter, like the coloring of a dream, wavered in the East and West, while the North thickened and the South lay still in brilliant expectation.... In some hall-way when Bedient was a little boy, he recalled a light like this of the West and East. There had been a long narrow pane of yellow-green glass over the front door. The light used to come through that in the afternoon and fill the hall and frighten him. It was so on deck now. The voices of the sailors had that same unearthly quality as the light--ineffectual, remote. Out of the hold of the _Truxton_ came a ghostly sigh. Bedient couldn't explain, unless it was some new and mighty strain upon the keel and ribs. A moment more and the Destroyer itself was visible in the changing North. It was sharp-lined--a great wedge of absolute night--and from it, the last vestiges of day dropped back affrighted. And Bedient heard |
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