"Because the ship and the guns are mine, Shane," she smiled quietly; "my present."
With a terrific smash of the fist he broke in the top of the piano. The wires jangled in pandemonium. The candles fell to the floor.
"Hell's fire and God's damnation!" He swore at her. "You fool!"
She rose, her breasts heaving. Her eyes flashed.
"You've no right to speak to me like that, Shane Campbell."
"Oh, yes, I have. Every damned right! Do you think I'd let any woman go cruising around the North Seas, with a crew of foreigners, and a shipmaster she doesn't know.... I'll bring the bi—the boat in...."
§ 12
They left the city of strange ugly women, with great spirit in their faces, and great bearing to the body of them, and of slim cat-like men, who had great power in their eyes.... A very beautiful city of churches and hammered brass ... a place of high rarefied thinking and savage animal passion.... They left it on a July morning with the sun high.... And they sailed east, sou'east down the Gulf of Finland, until Dago Island was on their port quarter....
And they rolled down the Baltic Sea, sailing sou'-sou'west, until they passed Gotland, and they edged west again, leaving Bornholm to port.... And they sailed past Malmö into the Sound, heading north for the Cattegat.... They turned the Skaw and swung her into the Skage-Rack.... And the wind held....
And once out of there, they pointed her nose nor'west by nor' as though Iceland were only a buoy in a yacht-race.... And the wind held.... The summer nights of the North were on them, the unearthly beauty of the light.... There was no world.... They were sailing on the Milky Way.... Only the gurgle of the water at the bows, the whush of the wake beneath the counter, held them as by a thin umbilical cord to the world of men.... The whap-whap-whap of the cordage.... The ting-ting-ting of the helmsman's bell.... The cry for'a'd: "The lights are burning bright, sir!" ...