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CAPTAIN CHRISTY

253

querade. "I'm not deef. You no need to shout so." She frowned upon the letter for a space. "Well, you 're lucky," she continued. "He must be a fool, to want that hulk. What a scribble!— Take it away; it hurts my eyes. Ever going to bring me something to eat? If I can have anything that's fit to touch, I may get up this afternoon."

Thus, past the grimace of many a strange idol, the smoke of sacrifice mounts to the true acceptance.

III

Inside the cabin, neatly sombre with dark brown woodwork, it was neither day nor night. An old brass lamp against a bulkhead, stirring in the gimbals at the petty shock of harbor waves, cast a tremulous evening glow on the Mongol face of Zwinglius Turner, who sat on the lower stairs; but the venerable, rough head of the captain, who stood upright, caught a dull gleam—slanting down from tiny barred windows frost-white with fog—as from some wintry, dungeon-like dawn. The captain's air was of business and re-

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