The windows were open on account of the warmth, and they gave a view of the narrow mysterious harbor that seems to have been cut in the old heroic days by some giant who was also a poet. The high cliffs cast their shadows like sable robes upon the water, jeweled with the lights of the shipping. The sky all silence and stars, paling now in the moonlight, was almost the sky of Europe. Orion was there, and the Pleiades, and Cassiopæa dreaming in her diamond-studded chair.
The room itself was a strange mixture of Japan and Europe. The floor was the matted floor of Japan, the cane sofas might have been bought at Shoolbred’s. The walls were as plain and unadorned as the walls of a Japanese house are wont to be—that is to say, under the fans which the hotel proprietor had fastened to them—fans from Kioto, Tokyo, and Nara crucified against the white paneling and looking like great butterflies in some giant’s collection.
He lit a pipe. Jane was upstairs in some room, but there were still nine hours of waiting to be done; and he had promised that he would not go upstairs if permitted to pass the night in the hotel, but wait patiently for her to come to him at the hour of starting.
He felt that if he thought about her he would break his oath, so he drove her from his mind.
He watched the twinkling lights in the harbor; those darting about like fire-flies were the sampans; that long hulk all crusted with light was the La France, the ship in which Jane had intended to sail for Osaka. It was after ten now, and she was overdue to leave. That sister-hulk, equally gemmed, was the Nord Deutscher Lloyd boat leaving at dawn for Colombo. Those three lights in a triangle were the anchor lights of the great Russian cruiser Rurik—the ill-fated Rurik.
Suddenly a horn of light shot out from the bow of the La France, and she began to move like a glittering town towards the sea, and the wind from the west brought the faint music of a band. The La France had unbuoyed and was away.
He watched her as she picked her course through the shipping stealthily like a robber. Now with all side lights showing, now with them half extinguished as she veered to avoid the bell-buoy of the Atraska shoal; now a vague phantom swallowed by the shadows of the night.
The hotel was silent now, the Russians had gone off to their ship. Somewhere outside, somewhere in the gloom of the mysterious night, a chamécen was tinkling to the muttering of a little drum. What dancing girl was setting her steps to that tune—and where?
He rose to his feet and began to pace the room, then he turned the lamp up till it smoked, and turned it down till it was nearly out, and cursed the burner for his own stupidity.
Still the distant chamécen kept up its buzzing to the devil’s tattoo of the distant drum.