Page:Cruise of the Dry Dock.djvu/231

 that it was good luck to see the new moon clear. At any rate, as the sky darkened, the clear new moon brought Leonard comfort and renewed hope.

With a grateful feeling of the providence of an Almighty that hung out moon and stars, the youth glanced around the darkening horizon and presently observed a tiny light far to the south. He stared at it quite surprised, and then he chanced to see a star just above it. It was the reflection of Sirius in Canis Major.

The beam of a star must lead any thoughtful soul into endless reveries. Beneath its calm and infinite light, all human troubles fade to the brief complaining of a child in the night. Death becomes a small, unfeared thing, and life itself, the trail of a finger writing an unknown message upon water.

Filled with such musings, the American noted with surprise that the light on the sea which he had fancied to be the reflection of Sirius was moving. It was not the reflection of a star.

It was a light moving in the gathering darkness.

What sort of light could it be? A Will o'