Page:Arthur Stringer - The Shadow.djvu/144

 them were the scattered lights of the harbor and the mild crescent of the outer bay. They could see the white wheeling finger of some foreign gunboat as its searchlight played back and forth in the darkness.

She sighed with weariness and dropped cross-legged down on the coping tiles against which he leaned, regaining his breath. She squatted there, cooingly, like a child exhausted with its evening games.

"I 'm dished!" she murmured, as she sat there breathing audibly through the darkness. "I 'm dished for this coast!"

He sat down beside her, staring at the searchlight. There seemed something reassuring, something authoritative and comforting, in the thought of it watching there in the darkness.

The girl touched him on the knee and then shifted her position on the coping tiles, without rising to her feet.

"Come here!" she commanded. And when he was close beside her she pointed with her thin white arm. "That 's Saint Poalo there—you can just make it out, up high, see. And