Two men in a small boat were pulling
from her to the farther shore. A thin haze of blue smoke lay over the
town at his feet, and the noise of mallets in the ship-building yards
came across to him through the clear afternoon. Zeb hardly noticed all
this, for his mind was busy with a problem. He halted by a milestone on
the brow of the hill, to consider.
And then suddenly he sat down on the stone and shivered. The sweat was
still trickling down his face and down his back; but it had turned cold
as ice. A new idea had taken him, an idea of which at first he felt
fairly afraid. He passed a hand over his eyes and looked down again at
the frigate. But he stared at her stupidly, and his mind was busy with
another picture.
It occurred to him that he must go on if he meant to arrange with
Webber, that afternoon. So he got up from the stone and went down the
steep hill towards the ferry, stumbling over the rough stones in the
road and hardly looking at his steps, but moving now rapidly, now
slowly, like a drunken man.
The street that led down to the ferry dated back to an age before carts
had superseded pack-horses, and the makers had cut it in stairs and
paved it with cobbles.
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