Page:Rowland--In the shadow.djvu/215

 eyes shall see the glory of the coming of the Lord!" and soon he found that he was chanting the words full-toned, while the stirring of Jules and Rosenthal in their bunks told him that they had been awakened.

Sleep was impossible. He leaped from his bunk and made his way on deck in his pajamas. The night was dark as a night in the Gulf Stream can be.

The day had been sultry, humid; the air aqueous with the soddenness of that broad, tropical river flowing its even course through the ocean as if confined in banks of clay. Dessalines passed beneath the bridge, on up into the eyes, where he found a negro lookout stationed. This man he utterly disregarded. He was an American, a peasant, doubtless filled with superstitious awe at the weird shapes floating in the murk and the soft voices talking in the wind.

It was blowing a fresh gale ahead and gaining in weight as the night wore on. The ship was snoring into the short, head sea; the white fire flaming from her bows and whirling astern in blazing eddies. Dessalines, as far forward as he could go, leaned in the angle of the bow, straining forward, staring at the shrouded horizon. There was the reek of brine in the wet wind and a weight as of solid water which failed to satisfy his deep-lunged craving for air. The drench of the spray upon his naked chest was warm as the wind and no more humid.

For long he stood there, his head whirling with each soaring plunge; his brain reeling with wild fancies; one displacing the other, even as the racing swells swept past the flying bows. He could not think; his mind failed to detain one single hurrying fancy; his whole 205