“Right.”
“I have some gear of yours.”
“Right. I’ll see about it.”
“’Night.”
“’Night.”
Off he went.
They had seen enough of the pictures, and having no inclination for cafés or taverns or gambling shops they made back toward the wharves, Satan walking in profound silence, Ratcliffe thinking.
The whole evening he had been followed by a miserable sort of half-depression. It had attached itself to him first on the deck of the Sarah, born of his return to civilization; it had managed to decolorize the past few weeks and demagnetize Jude.
His conscious mind had never quite gauged the hold that Jude had managed to get upon him, and this subconscious devil, rising at the touch of civilization, like a gas bubble from his conventional past, had burst, with spoiling effect, robbing the Sarah of her romance and sea-charm and the past few weeks of their brightness. Jude had dimmed with everything else, become part and parcel of what seemed an illusion.
It was while sitting at the pictures, in black darkness, with knowledge of Skelton’s presence, that the atmosphere began to clear, the waves to beat again on Cormorant Cay, the gulls to fly and call—and Jude come back to life.