Mr Lestrange after a while closed the book he was reading, looked
around him and sighed.

The cabin of the Northumberland was a cheerful enough place,
pierced by the polished shaft of the mizzen mast, carpeted with
an Axminster carpet, and garnished with mirrors let into the
white pine panelling. Lestrange was staring at the reflection of
his own face in one of these mirrors fixed just opposite to where
he sat.

His emaciation was terrible, and it was just perhaps at this
moment that he first recognised the fact that he must not only
die, but die soon.

He turned from the mirror and sat for a while with his chin
resting upon his hand, and his eyes fixed on an ink spot upon the
table-cloth; then he arose, and crossing the cabin climbed
laboriously up the companionway to the deck.

As he leaned against the bulwark rail to recover his breath, the
splendour and beauty of the Southern night struck him to the
heart with a cruel pang. He took his seat on a deck chair and gazed
up at the Milky Way, that great triumphal arch built of suns that
the dawn would sweep away like a dream.

In the Milky Way, near the Southern Cross, occurs a terrible
circular abyss, the Coal Sack. So sharply defined is it, so
suggestive of a void and bottomless cavern, that the
contemplation of it afflicts the imaginative mind with vertigo.