Meldon lay stretched on the deck outside the combing of the cockpit.
Nirvana had no attraction for him. He resented forced inactivity as an
unendurable wrong. Instead of smoking with half-closed eyes, he peered
eagerly forward under the sail. He noted everything--the floating
gulls and puffins, the stiff, wild-eyed cormorants, the jelly-fish, the
whirling eddies of the tide. As the yacht drifted on, or was driven
forward by the occasional faint puffs of air, he hissed through his
teeth in the way known to sailors as whistling for a breeze. He gazed
long and steadily at the beach beyond the _Spindrift's_ moorings.
"I think," he said at last, "that there is a man on the shore, and he
looks to me very much as if he was waiting for us."
Major Kent made no answer. His feeling was that the man who waited
might be left to wait without speculation about his purpose. Guessing
at the possible business of an unknown and distant man is a form of
mental exertion very distasteful to any one who has entered into the
calm joy of drifting home after sunset. But Meldon was a man of
incurably active mind. He was deeply interested in the solitary figure
on the beach.
Pages:
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132