“Yes. He will do it. He can find her.”
“But he will discover our weakness!”
Frontin snapped his fingers. “Let him. Now, return to our omens! For example, that star which the cap’n wears. You believe in that Star of Dreams?”
Burke smiled a sad and twisted smile.
“I believe in his belief, my dear Frontin. He and you and I—we follow that star out of the world, over the horizon; it is a symbol of the happiness that we have never found, and will never find alive. It has led us here to this desolate spot. Is that an omen? Then all this damned and icebound northland is an omen, for we Irish believe that hell is a place of snow and ice. Has this fog a father? Out of whose womb came this ice, and who has gendered the hoary frost of heaven?”
“We can dispense with poetry, which has a suspiciously Biblical sound,” said Frontin drily. “Thank heaven I am no Irishman, to make misfortunes into poetry! Instead, I make them into a ladder.”
Sir Phelim laughed. “Poet yourself, dark man! Well, why all this talk of omens and the star that we follow?”
“Because I propose to follow it now.”
For an instant Burke did not get the full import of these words, until something in the tone, in the glinting dark eyes, of Frontin gave him enlightenment. Then he started.
“Impossible! That were rank madness——”