He took her up in his arms as a child and cradled her, but she did not sleep right away. Out in the China Sea ahead, the sun was setting in gloomy splendour. They watched it till it was only a puddle of blood upon the waters; and then darkness dropped like a leaden curtain upon the shimmering sea. From all sides the horizon drew near in black walls across which the heat-lightning wrote in rageful zigzags. The wind had gone down still more and little waves slapped up against the sides of the boat like caresses. A great loneliness, half sweet, half bitter, descended upon them.
"I'm a little afraid, Lad," she murmured. Jack began to whine and she took him up; then, cuddling closer, she went asleep. And the little boat drifted on in the illimitable darkness, the girl and the dog asleep, and the man awake with care and tenderness, while behind a phosphorescence streaked back and forth, back and forth, in ceaseless vigil.
Toward midnight he saw a light far to the left, fixed as if on shore, and he began shouting over the water. This awakened the girl and she joined her melodious halloo to his cries, while Jack barked wildly. But there came no response, and after a while they stopped and went back to their first position. Later, a sudden creaking in the silence startled him, and not a hundred feet away a lorcha was passing like a
