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 CHAPTER XXIV

OAN sat down before the beach-fire and gazed into its embers. The charm of the verses, which still ran through her mind, had not made her forget the Ailouros. She had lost it, a beautiful and precious thing. In miserable imagination she pictured its fate. She saw the poor frightened boat tossed rudderless in the open sea, harried and driven, wandering desolate through the outer night, a helpless mast swinging across the pitiless stars. She saw the broken hull tossed upon the rocks, battered, splintered, crushed by the Reef. She saw it floating bottom up far from land, with gulls wheeling and shrieking above it.

Joan wondered how she could face Jim, how she could bear to meet Elspeth's eyes. They would never trust her again, and she did not deserve to be trusted. She remembered Jim's half-joking words about "wrecking, marooning, or losing overboard" his only son, and her own