The great black mass brooding over our very mastheads began to pivot
away from the ship's side silently. And now I forgot the secret stranger
ready to depart, and remembered only that I was a total stranger to the
ship. I did not know her. Would she do it? How was she to be handled?
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I swung the mainyard and waited helplessly. She was perhaps stopped, and
her very fate hung in the balance, with the black mass of Koh-ring like
the gate of the everlasting night towering over her taffrail. What would
she do now? Had she way on her yet? I stepped to the side swiftly, and
on the shadowy water I could see nothing except a faint phosphorescent
flash revealing the glassy smoothness of the sleeping surface. It was
impossible to tell--and I had not learned yet the feel of my ship. Was
she moving? What I needed was something easily seen, a piece of paper,
which I could throw overboard and watch. I had nothing on me. To run
down for it I didn't dare. There was no time. All at once my strained,
yearning stare distinguished a white object floating within a yard of
the ship's side. White on the black water. A phosphorescent flash passed
under it. What was that thing? . . . I recognized my own floppy hat. It
must have fallen off his head . . . and he didn't bother. Now I had what
I wanted--the saving mark for my eyes. But I hardly thought of my other
self, now gone from the ship, to be hidden forever from all friendly
faces, to be a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth, with no brand of
the curse on his sane forehead to stay a slaying hand . . . too proud to
explain.
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