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 this simple citizen of a plain and observed world. "What do such things mean?

"To throw away that wrap!"

In all the southward heaven there were only a planet and the sinking moon, and from his feet a path of quivering light must have started and run up to the extreme dark edge before him of the sky. Ever and again the darkness east and west of that glory would be lit by a momentary gleam of phosphorescence; and far out the lights of ships were shining bright and yellow. Across its shimmer a black fishing smack was gliding out of mystery into mystery. Dungeness shone from the west a pinpoint of red light, and in the east the tireless glare of that great beacon on Gris-nez wheeled athwart the sky and vanished and came again.

The interrogation of his lantern must have gone out for a little way, a stain of faint pink curiosity upon the mysterious vast serenity of night.