Page:Stories of the Sea.djvu/156

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and chattels of Captain Black, and Leath, locked in his room, was left alone with his secret, if he had one.

It was with a sense of infinite relief that Farnham, coming on deck one morning, saw the Skelligs rising like mammoth teeth from the sea, and soon afterward the green cliffs of the Irish mainland. His spirits rose as the steamer ran along the coast, passed inside the Fastnet Rock, and finally turned into the mouth of Queenstown Harbor; and he watched with lively interest the arrival alongside of the rakish little tender and the transfer of an interminable number of mail-bags to her ample deck. The procession of bag-bearing stewards having finished their labors, he crossed to the opposite side of the ship, and was engaged in serene contemplation of the whitewashed glories of the Roche’s Point light, when he was touched on the shoulder, and turning, saw the purser at his side with two strangers.