"I say--where is it?"
Nothing whatever was to be seen between the point and the jetty. The
stretch of Diamond Bay was like a piece of purple shadow, lustrous and
empty, while beyond the land, the open sea lay blue and opaque under the
sun. Heyst's eyes swept all over the offing till they met, far off, the
dark cone of the volcano, with its faint plume of smoke broadening and
vanishing everlastingly at the top, without altering its shape in the
glowing transparency of the evening.
"The fellow has been dreaming," he muttered to himself.
He looked hard at the Chinaman. Wang seemed turned into stone. Suddenly,
as if he had received a shock, he started, flung his arm out with a
pointing forefinger, and made guttural noises to the effect that there,
there, there, he had seen a boat.
It was very uncanny. Heyst thought of some strange hallucination.
Unlikely enough; but that a boat with three men in it should have sunk
between the point and the jetty, suddenly, like a stone, without leaving
as much on the surface as a floating oar, was still more unlikely. The
theory of a phantom boat would have been more credible than that.
"Confound it!" he muttered to himself.
He was unpleasantly affected by this mystery; but now a simple
explanation occurred to him. He stepped hastily out on the wharf. The
boat, if it had existed and had retreated, could perhaps be seen from
the far end of the long jetty.
Pages:
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277