atch, from eight o'clock
until midnight, and Barry remained on deck with him. A red sun had
dipped below the sea line two hours before, and a faint breeze sprang up
at his setting. Now the _Barang_ leaned slightly to full canvas and
snored easily through the phosphorescent seas with a pleasant tinkling
of running wavelets along her sides. Overhead the heavens were luminous
with sparks of ultra brilliance; the decks and sails of the ancient
brigantine were bathed in soft radiance, ruled across and along with
bars of blackest shadow. A softly noisy chorus of sea voices kept rhythm
to the swaying of the tall spars, and from somewhere out in the
shimmering sea came the sob and suck of a broken swell over a submerged
reef.

A brown man stood at the wheel like a brown wooden figure, his arms and
face vaguely illumined by the glow from the binnacle lamp. Forward the
decks were silent and deserted, except in one spot. Here a thin bar of
yellow light slashed in two the shadowed shape of the galley, eclipsed
at intervals as the cook inside moved to and fro in his business of
preparing dough for the morning's bread.

The spell of the night fell over Barry. He sent his thoughts ahead,
dreamily, trying to peer into the future as if to see what it would hold
for him. But the picture invariably dissolved as soon as it was conjured
out of the mists, and in its place glowed the vision of a girl in
Mission dress, simple and sweet: the girl whose good name he had
defended; whose picture now lay in the lid of his chronometer box, where
he must see it every time he went to his room.

Vandersee asked permission and went below to see Little. As he went, he
remarked that it would be the last time his attentions would be
necessary; the seasick Viking would be his own good man again by
morning. Barry was dragged out of his dreams when the second mate spoke
to him; now he shook off his fancies and walked aft to the compass.
Satisfied with the steering, he passed along the poop towards the
deckhouse and leaned against the lee forward corner of it, scanning the
lofty, indistinct leeches of the forward canvas.

Up through the companionway floated Little's voice, and the skipper
smiled at the altered tone of it. It was the voice of a man conscious of
a growing healthy appetite. Vandersee's voice chimed in and died away,
as if the man had gone somewhere else, perhaps in search of food for his
hungry patient. There ensued a space of perhaps ninety