Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/281

 blood-red tropical sun mounting up above its rim, where dull orange paled into dark azure. On his face he could feel the sea air, still fresh and balmy. There seemed something Edenic in its limpidity, something unearthly in its over-exquisite and unvoluptuous softness. It seemed to etherealise life, to beautify even the tainted and sordid hulk of wood and steel and steam that forged ever forward across its universal curve of azure peace. The sea itself, as he stood there watching it, assumed strange and quickly altering tints. Along some slight wind-riffle it became claret-coloured and turquoise and violet. The lace-work edge of some wandering current left it royal with floating purple, shot through, in spots, with flashing ruby-red that held all the fire of a thousand cinnamon-garnets. In other places some miracle of refracted light made the softly undulatory surface a bosom of breathing quicksilver. Then a point's shift in the sun's altitude merged and darkened the silver into the pale blue of forget-me-nots, deepening it still again into dully lustrous maroon and lapis-lazuli, streaking it with lilac and apple-green, leaving it as varied and mystic as the breast-plate of an Hebraic high-priest.

McKinnon took a deep breath of that soft and balmy air, and felt that life was still beautiful. He felt that there were still great hopes to be