He seldom moved except to brush them away.
The great open spaces made him passive and
the restlessness of the water quieted him.
He intended during the voyage to decide upon a
course of action, but he held all this away
from him for the present and lay in a blessed
gray oblivion. Deep down in him somewhere
his resolution was weakening and strengthening,
ebbing and flowing. The thing that perturbed
him went on as steadily as his pulse,
but he was almost unconscious of it.
He was submerged in the vast impersonal
grayness about him, and at intervals the sidelong
roll of the boat measured off time like the ticking
of a clock. He felt released from everything
that troubled and perplexed him. It was as if
he had tricked and outwitted torturing memories,
had actually managed to get on board without them.
He thought of nothing at all. If his mind now
and again picked a face out of the grayness,
it was Lucius Wilson's, or the face of an old schoolmate,
forgotten for years; or it was the slim outline of a
favorite greyhound he used to hunt jack-rabbits with
when he was a boy.
Toward six o'clock the wind rose and
tugged at the tarpaulin and brought the swell
higher. After dinner Alexander came back to
the wet deck, piled his damp rugs over him
again, and sat smoking, losing himself in the
obliterating blackness and drowsing in the
rush of the gale. Before he went below a few
bright stars were pricked off between heavily
moving masses of cloud.
Pages:
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68