Nearing the shore, he brushed through the chill aspersion of bristling thickets, when suddenly the light gleamed again, fixed, through the lowest boughs. He stopped, listened, then slipped forward cautiously, toward a murmur of voices. Subdued but unmistakable, it was the broken sing-song of that speech from the other side of the world. He threaded without a sound the interstitial windings of the underbrush, and crouched at the edge of the clearing. On the old quarter-deck, the lantern burned dimly. As in a luminous smoke, two men sat talking, with now and then a gesture that set enormous hands, outspread fingers, wavering on the magic-lantern screen of the fog. Their alien tones rose and fell, in a quiet, scolding incantation. The more vehement speaker was Tony. Facing him, oddly squatting upon heels, the yellow man of the tower nodded continually, amicably, sagely, like a toy mandarin. [Illustration] CHAPTER IV PAN’S PIPES At breakfast Tony discoursed readily as ever, smiled as engagingly, with glances no less frank, provocative, or droll. Twice he forced old Mr. Bissant to brighten his cloudy morning face, to smite with open palm his short white curls, and chuckle; once, even, to parry joke with joke. But Miles sat dazed and unhappy. Their little house, lacking so many things, had lacked also the presence of a lie; before that presence, now, he came awkwardly, and as it were with eyes averted. He heard Tony laugh, saw the white flash of his teeth, the quick, foreign heave of his burly shoulders, the nameless turns of speech and look by which friend signals to friend; he knew Tony for the same man of yesterday, challenging the same admiration; yet between himself and all this, a single night had stretched a dismal vacuum, a distance slight, but both intensive and insulating. The sudden change puzzled him abominably. “An Italianate Englishman,” his grandfather descanted, “they used to call a devil incarnate. I leave it to fancy what an Italian who--” “Aha, but I’m not!” cried Tony warmly. “I have you there. My father was Italian born, yes. That’s only half. And me, bless you, I sailed out on an English ship a twelve-year-old. Under the same flag ever since. An English deck is English soil. Come now, Mr. Bissant, to be honest--” While their debate ran high, Miles slipped quietly from the room. Last night’s fog had poured up the channel, overflowed the hills, and now submerged all but the smoky loom of the hackmatack pillars, as Miles passed between them. Sea-rime silvered his rough jacket; from beneath wet eyelashes he peered into motionless, white space; the very hill underfoot was a declivity felt, not seen. He wandered slowly down it, hands in pockets, head bent.