he moment I was
alone with his wife by the rail, watching the stars beginning to
prick through the darkening sky. The _Sylph_ was running smoothly,
with the wind almost aft; the scud of water past her bows and the
occasional creak of a block aloft were the only sounds audible in the
silence that lay like a benediction upon the sea.

"You may think it unfeeling of me," she began, quite abruptly,
"but all this past trouble of mine, now that it is ended, I have
completely dismissed. Already it begins to seem like a horrid dream.
And as for that island"--her eyes looked off toward Muloa now
impending upon us and lighting up the heavens with its sullen flare--
"it seems incredible that I ever set foot upon it.

"Perhaps you understand," she went on, after a pause, "that I have
not told my husband. But I have not deceived him. He knows that I
was once married, and that the man is no longer living. He does not
wish to know more. Of course he is aware that Uncle Geoffrey came
out here to--to see a Mr. Leavitt, a matter which he has no idea
concerned me. He thanks the stars for whatever it was that did bring
us out here, for otherwise he would not have met me."

"It has turned out most happily," I murmured.

"It was almost disaster. After meeting Mr. Joyce--and I was weak
enough to let myself become engaged--to have discovered that I was
still chained to a living creature like that.... I should have
killed myself."

"But surely the courts--"

She shook her head with decision. "My church does not recognize that
sort of freedom."

We were drawing steadily nearer to Muloa. The mountain was breathing
slowly and heavily--a vast flare that lifted fanlike in the skies
and died away. Lightning played fitfully through the dense mass of
smoke and choking gases that hung like a pall over the great cone.
It was like the night sky that overhangs a city of gigantic
blast-furnaces, only infinitely multiplied. The sails of the _Sylph_
caught the ruddy tinge like a phantom craft gliding through the black
night, its canvas still dyed with the sunset glow. The faces of the
crew, turned to watch the spectacle, curiously fixed and inhuman,
were picked out of the gloom by the same fantastic light. It was as
if the schooner, with masts and riggings etched black against the
lurid sky, sailed on into the Day of Judgment.

* * * * *

It was after midnight. The _Sylph_ came about, with sails trembling,
and lost