Buck looked slowly up and his eyes met mine. They rested there for a moment. His lips moved for a little, but I heard nothing he said. Then he let his gaze droop to the deck planks and bowed his head.
A long time he sat there while I watched the lighthouse draw more and more to the westward. Suddenly he looked up.
“She’s all clear now, sir, an’ if you say so I’ll go below an’ start a bit o’ fire.”
“Go ahead, and tell Arthur to come here?” I said.
I watched him as he staggered below. He was tired out, wet, and despondent. The fate of the Pocosin was too evident for me to ask questions. I respected him for not mentioning the girl again. It was evident what she had been to him. It was long ago, but the memory was fresh before him. He was passing near the grave of the one woman he had loved, and there was more than the salt drift in his eyes as he went down the companion. In a few minutes a stream of black smoke poured from the funnel in the deck and was whirled away to leeward. Soon the smell of frying bacon was swept aft, and I went below to a warm breakfast to be followed by a nap, while the plunging little vessel rode safely into the great Gulf sea. We had gone past the graveyard of the Diamond Shoals.
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced quotation marks retained.
Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained; occurrences of inconsistent hyphenation have not been changed.
Chapter names have been combined with the illustrations preceding the chapters.