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 spread a thin, tenuous ceiling; the feather clouds of a few minutes ago had widened to white patches half covering the western sky.

On the sea, far below, slipped purple shadows split by gleaming streaks of the sun which struck through the rifts in the cloud ceiling; on the sea stretched a long, black tendril of smoke trailing a boat bound for Bermuda, probably; on the sea, shoreward, showed a sharp, narrow seed—a steamer, properly stoked, bearing along the coast. In the shimmering sea behind us, the speck of Pete's plane was swallowed.

I thought of it falling twelve thousand feet and Pete in the air under his parachute; I thought of Kent sent down, yesterday, with one wing cracked off; of Selby spinning into the sea on the morning before; I thought of the girl who just now had been in the sun beside us on the sea; and I could not picture her deliberately flying at Selby and Kent to send them down. But I could not picture her sending down Pete, either; and he had said she had done it.

Of Pete now I could see only his heels.