CHAPTER XXVI
THE DEAD-LINE
Alicia stood on guard at the door of the wireless room, waiting for McKinnon's return. More and more, in those last strange hours of uncertainty, she dreaded being alone. There seemed something ominous and bodeful in the very quietness of the midnight ship, as she rocked and grated against the pier in the long and sullen ground-swell of the roadstead. The screw no longer throbbed, the engines no longer pulsed and churned. The quietness seemed deathlike. It was broken only by the steps of De Brigard's sentries, as they sleepily paced the long deck, one to port and one to starboard. Yet even these two figures, with their shouldered carbines, seemed ghostlike, presaging vague evils. The heat, too, was oppressive, for not a breath of air seemed to stir in the quiet ship. But in comparably more oppressive was the silence so rhythmically broken by the spectral tread of the pacing sentries. Then the infinitely minute
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