Page:Walpole--portrait of man with red hair.djvu/309

 with the colours of the early morning blue. The room was white—pure virgin white—round, and bare of furniture. Only—and this was what had caught the cry from Harkness—three pillars supported the ceiling, and to these three pillars were bound by white cord, first himself, then Dunbar, then, naked as they, Jabez.

The fisherman stood there facing Harkness—a gigantic figure. Yesterday afternoon on the hill, last night in the garden Harkness had not recognised the man's huge proportions under his clothes. Now, bound there, with his black hair and beard, his great chest, the muscle of his arms and thighs, the sunlight bathing him, he was mighty to see.

His eyes were mild and puzzled like the eyes of a dog who has been chained against reason. He was making a strange restless motion from side to side as though he were testing the white cords that held him. His face above his beard, his neck, the upper part of his chest, his hands, his legs beneath the knees, were a deep russet brown, the rest of him a fair white, striking strangely with the jet blackness of his hair.

He smiled as he saw Harkness's astonishment.

"Aye, sir," he said. "It wasn't me you was expectin' to see here, and it wasn't myself that was expectin' to be here neither."

They were alone—no Japanese, no Crispin.

"I've been in here half an hour before you come,"