Then argument broke out and the clamor of voices was loud on the night.
Courant bore the brunt of the attack, Zavier's ideas being scanty, his
mode of procedure a persistent, reiteration of his original
proposition. Interruptions were furnished in a sudden, cracked laugh
from Daddy John, and phrases of dissent or approval from Glen and Bella
stretching their ears from the front of the tent. Only Lucy said
nothing, her head wrapped in a shawl, her face down-drooped and pale.
Late that night Susan was waked by whispering sounds which wound
stealthily through her sleep feeling for her consciousness. At first
she lay with her eyes shut, breathing softly, till the sounds
percolated through the stupor of her fatigue and she woke,
disentangling them from dreams. She threw back her blankets and sat
alert thinking of Indians.
The moon was full, silver tides lapping in below the tent's rim. She
stole to the flap listening, then drew it softly open. Her tent had
been pitched beneath a group of trees which made a splash of shadow
broken with mottlings of moonlight. In the depths of this shadow she
discerned two figures, the white flecks and slivers sliding along the
dark oblong of their shapes as they strayed with loitering steps or
stood whispering. The straight edge of their outline, the unbroken
solidity of their bulk, told her they were wrapped in the same blanket,
a custom in the Indian lover's courtship. Their backs were toward her,
the two heads rising from the blanket's folds, showing as a rounded
pyramidal finish. As she looked they paced beyond the shadow into the
full unobscured light, and she saw that the higher head was dark, the
other fair, crowned with a circlet of shining hair.
Her heart gave an astounded leap. Her first instinct was to draw back,
her second to stand where she was, seemly traditions overwhelmed in
amazement. The whispering ceased, the heads inclined to each other,
the light one drooping backward, the dark one leaning toward it, till
they rested together for a long, still moment. Then they separated,
the woman drawing herself from the blanket and with a whispered word
stealing away, a furtive figure flitting through light and shade to the
McMurdo tents. The man turned and walked to the fire, and Susan saw it
was Zavier. He threw on a brand and in its leaping ray stood
motionless, looking at the flame, a slight, fixed smile on his lips.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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