Page:Cruise of the Jasper B (1916).djvu/31

 But he laid the rapier down. After all, the rapier is scarcely a thing of this century. Cleggett, for the first time, felt a little impatient with the rapier. It is all very well to dream with a rapier. But now, he was free; reality was before him; the world of actual adventure called. He had but to choose!

He considered. He tried to look into that bright, adventurous future. Presently he went to the window, and gazed out. Tides of night and mystery, flooding in from the farther, dark, mysterious ocean, all but submerged lower Manhattan; high and beautiful above these waves of shadow, triumphing over them and accentuating them, shone a star from the top of the Woolworth building; flecks of light indicated the noble curve of that great bridge which soars like a song in stone and steel above the shifting waters; the river itself was dotted here and there with moving lights; it was a nocturne waiting for its Whistler; here sea and city met in glamour and beauty and illusion.

But it was not the city which called to Cleggett. It was the sea. A breeze blew in from the bay and stirred his window curtains; it was salt in his nostrils. . ..