Page:Anderson--Isle of seven moons.djvu/315

303 The eyes of the strange girl were very soft, but something sharpened them now, and her strange concern placed a restraint on the other two.

It is a funny way Life has of snarling things. Sometimes the three fates are nothing but malicious cats. Linda's eyes were gazing at the man, his were bent on the younger girl, while she was watching the opening in the green, waiting for a fourth to appear. And the threads were even more badly snarled with Carlotta and Phil not far away. Their attention was called to the blue sea again by the voice of Benson singing out to the skipper:

"If there ain't that black devil of a yacht again! If she'd only shake out some good canvas instead o' showin' them blasted funnels, I'd swear old Cap'n Bluebeard himself had his bloody claws on the wheel, or that woman-killer Lollinoy, with a chip of an iceberg for a heart. Wished I had a little eight-pounder and I'd send her to Davy Jones' locker where she belongs."

Trim and black, rakish and sinister, the yacht nosed her way over the blue, rounded the Cape, and, bearing South west, cast anchor in the harbour which Ben had called "South Bay"—smaller and not so safe as Rainbow Bay. Above the headland, they could see the twin needles of masts and the last grey blue feather of smoke, floating away.

Sally turned towards the mountain. Over the decapitated cone hung, like a black ostrich plume, almost motionless, the same coil of smoke which she had seen at moonrise of the night before, but grown a little larger now.