Cunningham drank his coffee deliberately.
“Yes.”
“Oh!”
Jane shrank back a little.
“But never willfully,” Cunningham added—“always in self-defence, and never a white man.”
There was a peculiar phase about the man’s singular beauty. Animated, it was youthful; in grim repose, it was sad and old.
“Death!” said Jane in a kind of awed whisper. “I have watched many die, and I cannot get over the terror of it. Here is a man with all the faculties, physical and mental; a human being, loving, hating, working, sleeping; and in an instant he is nothing!”
“A Chinaman once said that the thought of death is as futile as water in the hand. By the way, Cleigh—and you too, captain—give the wireless a wide berth. There’s death there.”
Jane saw the fire opals leap into the dark eyes.