The candle, which he had put upon
the floor, cast up a yellow light on all the scant furniture, on the two
men as they thus talked to each other, with pale, tense faces, and threw
distorted shadows high up on the wooden walls.
Perhaps it was a relief to O'Shea to torture Caius some time with this
suspense. At last he said: "He's in the schooner."
"Le Maitre? How do you know?"
"Well, I'll tell ye how I know. I told ye there was no hurry."
If he was long now in speaking, Caius did not know it. Upon his brain
crowded thoughts and imaginations: wild plans for saving the woman he
loved; wild, unholy desires of revenge; and a wild vision of misery in
the background as yet--a foreboding that the end might be submission to
the worst pains of impotent despair.
O'Shea had taken out a piece of paper, but did not open it.
"'Tain't an hour back I got this. The skipper of the schooner and me
know each other. He's been bound over by me to let me know if that man
ever set foot in his ship to come to this place, and he's managed to get
a lad off his ship in the noight, and across the ice, and he brought me
this. Le Maitre, he's drunk, lyin' in his bunk; that's the way he's
preparing to come ashore. It may be one day, it may be two, afore the
schooner can get in. Le Maitre he won't get off it till it's in th'
harbour. I guess that's about all there is to tell.
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