I sat on that suggestion, but offered to take my own tiller and lend him
Grue. He couldn't wriggle out of it, seeing that his alleged motive had
been the overcrowding of my boat, but he looked rather sick when Grue
went aboard his boat.
As for me, I hoisted sail with something so near a chuckle that it
surprised me; and I looked at Evelyn Grey to see whether she had noticed
the unseemly symptom.
Apparently she had not. She sat forward, her eyes fixed soulfully upon
the moon. Had I been dedicated to any profession except a scientific
one--but let that pass.
Grue in Kemper's sail-boat led, and my boat followed out into the silvery
and purple dusk, now all sparkling under the high lustre of the moon.
Dimly I saw vast rafts of wild duck part and swim leisurely away to port
and starboard, leaving a glittering lane of water for us to sail through;
into the scintillant night from the sea sprang mullet, silvery,
quivering, falling back into the wash with a splash.
Here and there in the moonlight steered ominous black triangles, circling
us, leading us, sheering across bow and flashing wake, all phosphorescent
with lambent sea-fire--the fins of great sharks.
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