His faded eyes, which had seen
so much, did not attempt to explore the night, they never gave a glance
to the silent watchers against whom he brushed. Had a light been flashed
on him suddenly he would have appeared like a man walking in his sleep:
the somnambulist of an eternal dream. Mrs. Travers heard his footsteps
pass along the side of the deckhouse. She heard them--and let her head
fall again on her bare arms thrown over the little desk before which she
sat.
Jorgenson, standing by the taffrail, noted the faint reddish glow in the
massive blackness of the further shore. Jorgenson noted things quickly,
cursorily, perfunctorily, as phenomena unrelated to his own apparitional
existence of a visiting ghost. They were but passages in the game of men
who were still playing at life. He knew too well how much that game was
worth to be concerned about its course. He had given up the habit
of thinking for so long that the sudden resumption of it irked him
exceedingly, especially as he had to think on toward a conclusion. In
that world of eternal oblivion, of which he had tasted before Lingard
made him step back into the life of men, all things were settled
once for all. He was irritated by his own perplexity which was like a
reminder of that mortality made up of questions and passions from which
he had fancied he had freed himself forever.
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