Never had the grim red-eyed man at the stern been more exact and precise.
“It is well, comrades,” said he, weighing the last crumb of bread, “that we pronounce a benediction. ‘Eat, drink, and be merry!’” he cried solemnly, “‘for to-morrow we die.’”
The morrow fell and the next morrow.
Upon the rim of the Lower Immensity the rim of the Upper Immensity rested, without break in either of sail or cloud.
The next day Jean Petit leaned forward towards the gaunt, motionless, skeletons which gazed with fixed, burning eyes towards the south.
Jean Petit leaned forward, with his hand upon the haft of his knife, and spake.
His words sounded dull and hollow—coming as it were, from the depths of a vault in the awful underworld where lie the mysterious dead.
“There is no reason,” said he, “that all should die.”
The human spectres answered not. Perhaps they had not heard. Perhaps their thoughts were away by cool mountain springs, by spread banquets.
Jean Petit, with strange feverish insistence, repeated his assertion, which was also a question: