IX
As Captain March went up the companionway after supper, he thought he felt a puff of air across his face. Stepping out upon the deck, his eyes instinctively turned to the northeast, from which direction he expected the wind. A dove-colored light still shone in the eastern sky; below it the sea was a darker color, irradiated by the glowing west.
His daughter and the young men had followed him, and now she touched his arm.
"Isn't that a catspaw?" she asked, and pointed northward, where a dark film of purple seemed to roughen the long slope of a swell that shone like pink satin. Even as they looked, the slope became a shallow bowl, and the patch of purple faded to the uniform gray of the hollowed wave.
Captain March shook his head and sighed.
"It does beat the deuce," he said.
This was as wide a departure from the placid philosophy with which he looked upon life as he ever gave expression to; and his daughter and his mate, who knew him equally well, recognized in it the extent of his mental disturbance. To them both the prolonged calm, in the changing twilight, took on an aspect of uncanniness. It was as if they stood absolutely alone, the last of living things, in a chaos of dead waters, under the sweeping throng of stars, which saw not and heeded not the blotting out of their small world. Tacitly both had agreed to give no sign of their changed relations so long as they were compelled to meet daily.
Medbury slipped away forward for a turn about the deck. He looked at the lights to see if they were in order.