“How many?”
“Maybe fifty; maybe more.”
“Pretty good handful.”
“It would be if we didn’t start first. So it’s jus’ as well––not that we’re lookin’ fer trouble or even expectin’ it, as you may say, but jus’ to nip trouble in the bud, as the sayin’ is,––to look at our weapins.”
He drew out his own heavy Colt’s revolver, removed the cartridges, tested the hammer, and refilled the chambers. Out of the corner of his eye he watched Wilson to see that he was equally careful. The latter could not help but smile a little. He felt more as though he were on the stage than in real life. To be preparing for as much trouble as though in some uncivilized country, while still within sight of the office buildings of a modern city, seemed an absurdity. Yet here he was, in his sober senses, and at his side sat Stubbs, and, behind, the big chimneys belched smoke, while he thrust one cartridge after another into the bright cylinder of his weapon. But when he looked again at the ocean which lay before him an unbroken plain extending to the shores of other continents, his act and his situation seemed more natural. He was preparing for the things before him, not the life behind. The waters breaking at their feet were brothers to those many thousands of miles distant.
The sun sank lower and lower towards the blue horizon line, finally spattering the sky with color as it sank into the sea as though it had splashed into a 130 pot of molten gold. Behind them the whistles screamed that work might cease. In front, where there were no roads or paths to cut the blue, the only surface whereon man has not been able to leave his mark since the first created day, a deep peace came down. The world became almost a dream world, so hushed and vague it grew. The yacht which still rocked at anchor grew as dim as a ghost ship. The purple of the sky deepened and the stars came out.
“Look at her now,” drawled Stubbs, with a sweep of his hand towards the waters, “like an infant in arms, but afore mornin’ reachin’ for yer throat, maybe. Next to wimen I don’t s’pose there’s anythin’ so uncertain and contrary, as you may say.”
He raised his field glasses and studied the ship again which lay without lights, like a derelict. He rose lazily and stretched himself.
The light glow in the west disappeared and left the earth but scantily lighted by a new moon. The surface of the water was dark, so that from the shore a rowboat could not be seen for a distance of more than fifty yards. Stubbs strolled towards the place where they had landed and took from his black bag a small lantern which he lighted and, after some searching, placed upon a small, flat rock which he discovered.