Page:C Q, or, In the Wireless House (Train, 1912).djvu/107

 bandaged Cloud's head, he turned him so that the light would not fall upon his eyes, “try to go to sleep. I ’ll come in and see how you are every half hour or so, and whatever you do, don’t ring for the steward. Understand?”

Cloud made no answer, and Micky slipped the soiled silk curtain along its wire and enclosed him in his bunk. Quietly he turned out the light, locked the door on the outside and put the key in his pocket. So that was done!

He leaned heavily against the deck-house. It was now nearly seven bells. Half an hour more and the yellow disk of the moon would begin to whiten, the stars would draw away to minute points in a paling sky,&mdash;then would come the moment when the faded magic of the moonlight would be shattered as with a single blow by the reality of the down. You could n’t say just when it happened on one of those white nights,&mdash;but take that jolly-boat, over there. One minute it floated in a sort of indistinct yellow haze, not quite focusable, getting dimmer and dimmer, grayer and grayer, and then&mdash;bang! it anchored itself&mdash;a plain ordinary jolly-boat in its natural green and white, and the sea which had been quite bright and color $6$