Isn't that--what I
call--being invulnerable? When a man's greater than anything that
happens to him--"
So they talked, their speech bare and simple, but the pauses and longer
silences filled with deep understanding, solemnized by the time and the
place, as though their two lonely spirits caught wisdom from the night,
scope from the silent ocean, light from the flickering East.
The flashes, meanwhile, came faster and prolonged their glory, running
behind a thin, dead screen of scalloped clouds, piercing the tropic sky
with summer blue, and ripping out the lost horizon like a long black
fibre from pulp. The two friends watched in silence, when Rudolph rose,
and moved cautiously aft.
"Good-night," he whispered. "You must sleep now."
That was not, however, the reason. So long as the boiling witch-fire
turned their wake to golden vapor, he could not be sure; but whenever
the heat-lightning ran, and through the sere, phantasmal sail, the
lookout in the bow flashed like a sharp silhouette through wire
gauze,--then it seemed to Rudolph that another small black shape leapt
out astern, and vanished. He stood by the lowdah, watching anxiously.
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