"Parrington, are you coming? I ordered my boat for ten o'clock," said Harryman.
"As early as this, Harryman?" remonstrated Webster. "You'll be on board your boat quite soon enough, or do you want to keep a night watch also on your Japanese of the— What sort of a Maru was it?" he broke off, because Colonel McCabe pointed angrily at the approaching boy.
"Oh, nonsense!" growled Webster ill-humoredly. "A creature like that doesn't see or hear a thing."
The colonel glared at Webster, and then noisily mixed his drink.
Harryman and Parrington walked along the quay in silence, their steps resounding loudly in the stillness of the night. On the other side of the street fleeting shadows showed at the lighted windows of several harbor dens, over the entrance to which hung murky lamps and from which loud voices issued, proving that all was still in full swing there. There were only a few more steps to the spot where the yellow circle of light from the lanterns rendered the white uniforms of the sailors in the two boats visible. Parrington stood still. "Harryman," he said, repeating his former question, "do you believe there is danger——"
"I don't know, I really don't know," said Harryman nervously. Then, seizing Parrington's hands, he continued hurriedly, but in a low voice: "For days I have been living as if in a trance. It is as if I were lying in the delirium of fever; my head burns and my thoughts always return to the same spot, boring and burrowing; I feel as though a horrible eye were fixed on me from whose glance I cannot escape. I feel that I may at any moment awake from the trance, and that the awakening will be still more dreadful."
"You're feverish, Harryman; you're ill, and you'll infect others. You must take some quinine." With these words Parrington climbed into his gig, the sailors gave way with the oars, and the boat rushed through the water and disappeared into the darkness, where the bow oarsman was silhouetted against the pale yellow light of the boat's lantern like a strange phantom.
Harryman looked musingly after the boat of the Mindoro for a few minutes, and murmured: "He certainly has no fever which quinine will not cure." Then he got into his own boat, which also soon disappeared into the sultry summer night, while the dark water splashed and gurgled against the planks. The high quay wall, with its row of yellow and white lights, remained behind, and gradually sank down to the water line. They rowed past the side of a huge English steamer, which sent back the splash of the oars in a strange hollow echo, and then across to the Monadnock.
Harryman could not sleep, and joined the officer on duty on the bridge, where the slight breeze which came from the mountains afforded a little coolness.