"Once or twice the still shine of the lamp up through the open skylight-frame drew my eye to it in spite of me--it was the only light burning in the ship, and you saw the gleam of it from the starboard port-window of the cuddy, drawn in as it was for air, thrown on the dusky water, not many fathoms, apparently, off the jungly bank nearest the ship. I can't tell you how, but somehow or other the appearance of it there, like a yellow break in the misty shadow, letting one see the very froth floating over it, and the muddy tint of the river on its edges--with the hush below us in the cabin--awed me more than aught besides; and whether it was from mixing the thing with what happened afterwards, or how--perhaps the missionary moved inside--but when I noticed the gleam on the water quiver and darken for a moment, then shine out again, I felt I _knew_ it was then the captain's spirit passed away. I slipped with a thrill of my blood to the skylight, and saw Macleod still asleep, the missionary settling his spectacles on his nose to read again, as if _he_ had looked up too when I did; while the cot and bedclothes were hanging white in the shade as before, except that the knees were drawn up, and the head turned away. He might be dozing, though it came into my head I had heard the captain say he should last till the _turn of the tide_; and in fact all the sick men I ever knew die, unless there was something uncommon, died as the ebb came on. As I stepped back to the young lady's side, I could mark the Southern Cross by the after-edge of the mainmast, sparkling fairly upright above the cocoa-nut trees, and Orion high up nor'-westward seemed farther away--it was midnight. The thought flashed through me how something in the sky could draw up a man's soul, as the shot at his hammock-foot would sink his body down deep through blue water at sea--but the first light plash of the ebb alongside brought me back to the case in hand, and I gave Jacobs a quiet sign to look out sharp aloft.