ly confounded. Rousing
myself at last I drew my knife from the bulkhead and put out the light;
then very cautiously set wide the door, and thus lapped in the pitchy
dark (and mighty thankful for the good chain-shirt beneath my jerkin)
stood holding my breath to listen. But hearing no more than the usual
stir and bustle of the ship, I stole forward silent in my stockinged
feet, and groping before me with my left hand, the knife clenched in my
right, began to steal towards the ladder. And now, despite shirt of
mail, I felt a cold chill that crept betwixt my twitching
shoulder-blades as I went, for that which I feared was more hateful
than any knife.

Howbeit, reaching the ladder, I got me to the orlop (and mighty
thankful) and so to the upper deck, to find a wondrous fair night
breathing a sweet and balmy air and with a round moon uprising against
a great plenitude of stars. The moon was low as yet and, taking
advantage of the shadows, I got me into the gloom of the mainmast where
the boats were stowed; and here (being well screened from chance view)
I sat me down to drink in the glory of sea and sky, and to wait for
chance of speech with Adam. And huge joy was it to behold these vast
waters as they heaved to a slumberous swell and all radiant with the
moon's loveliness; or, gazing aloft, through the maze of ropes and
rigging, marvelled at the glory of the heaven set with its myriad
starry fires. And, contrasting all this with the place of black horror
whence I had come, I fell to a very ecstasy. And now, even as I sat
thus lost in pleasing wonderment, from the quarter-deck hard by came
the sweet, throbbing melody of a lute touched by skilled fingers and
therewith a voice richly soft and plaintive, yet thrilling with that
strange, vital ring had first arrested me and which I should have known
the world over. So she sang an air that I knew not, yet methought it
wondrous sweet; anon she breaks off, all at once, and falls to the song
I had heard her sing before now, viz.:

"A poor soul sat sighing by a green willow tree."

Now as I hearkened, my gaze bent aloft, the starry heavens grew all
sudden blurred and misty on my sight, and I knew again that deep
yearning for a life far different from that I (in my blind selfishness)
had marked out for myself. "Here truly" (thinks I) "is one of Godby's
'times of stars,' the which are good times being times of promise for
all that are blessed with eyes to see--saving only my