e.... Robin!
Robin, rid me of these babblers. She's coming!--all in white--like blown
spray--but she bears no roses. Lilies, lilies!--white samite like her
robe--but her eyes are turned away. Let her pass, ye fools! She's the
word of the night!" He staggered to his feet, swaying forward, clutching
at the empty air as at a man's throat, and again his laugh rang through
the cabin. "So you twisted it from me, Spanish dog!--so I raved out my
heart as to a woman? Then, Don Sathanas, we'll go home together and all
the soldiery of hell shall not unlock our embrace!" He grappled with an
invisible foe--bent him backward farther and farther over the brink of
the world--went down with him into unplumbed darkness....

They judged not the Captain of the _Cygnet_ for a craven and a traitor,
for, day after day and day after day, he lay in the Admiral's cabin, so
ill a man that the coasts of Death seemed nearer than those of England,
and man's condemnation an idle thing, seeing that so soon he must face
another Justiciar. So near at times to that ultimate shore did he drift
that those who watched him saw the shadow on his face. When the shadow
was deep they waited with held breath; when it somewhat lifted they
sorrowed that the tide had brought him back. He was of those
changelings from a fortunate land to whom Love clings when Faith has
covered her head and turned away. They that in heaviness of heart loved
him still grieved that he might not touch the dark shore. Better, far
better, to lay hold of it so, to go quietly in the not unhappy
fever-dream, wandering of old days, recking naught of the new. So the
matter might be adjudged elsewhere, but in this world glozed
and softened.

The days went on and still Fate played with him, drew him forward,
plucked him back. What fancies he had; what wild excursions he made into
dizzy, black, and horror-haunted regions; what aeons he lived beneath the
seas that stifled; by what winds he was whirled, through space, past
burning orbs that neither warmed nor lighted the all-surrounding night;
in what Titanic maze he was lost, lost forever, he and Pain that was his
brother from whom he might not part;--the sick brain made a hell and
languished in the world it had created! At other times, when the dark
coasts were near and the current very swift, pale paradises opened to
him where he lay for centuries, nor hot nor cold, neither waking nor
sleeping, not in joy and not in sorrow. Then the stopped pend