“C. Q.”; or, In the Wireless House
a maelstrom behind her. The gulls had vanished. Not a light showed on the gray expanse of the silvery, heaving sea. Four hundred feet forward on the bridge, an ulstered officer paced to and fro. Every window and port-hole was dark, except a yellow circle in the after deck-house, where some of the crew slept and whence came the mournful tinkle of a mandolin. Even the throb of the propeller seemed to be stilled, save when for a brief instant the stern rose to the apex of the angle which it described and the steamer trembled in her sleep. The air was as soft as in the tropics. In the silence it seemed as though a whisper could be heard the length of the ship, although the nigh was full of soft murmurs, the lapping and rush of the water along the side, the strain of ropes, and the seething of the waves.
He must have fallen asleep as he lay propped against the wireless house, for the moon was high overhead when the creak of shoes on the deck below and the soft closing of a door brought him tensely to himself. Dreams of English castles, green lawns, and purple afternoon shadows, of white-dressed girls and a big St. Bernard dog, dissolved into a glittering sea567
