It was a sail.

He stood with his eyes still shaded, motionless but for the movement of the boat.

From away out there a hand seemed to have reached clutching at his heart. The star so steadfast and so still held him by its very stillness and steadfastness. There, where the sunlight showed that motionless point of light were crowded decks, bending spars, snoring sails, life, motion; a ship breasting her way through the blue sea, heeling to the breeze.

All that was there. Here, nothing but a star marking poignantly the vacancy of illimitable distance. The wind had freshened, it was as though the ship had sent the joyous breath of life before her, the breezed-up water smacked the boat merrily, and even as he looked the star grew, lifting steadily as the mainsails joined the topsails above the sea line.

As Gaspard watched, his confidence and assurance left him. The blind trust in chance that had possessed him all day vanished now that chance had shewn her hand.

At once and vividly his true position stood before him, and the horrible chances of death that lay in it, and, so strange a thing is mind, now and for the first time did the sense of his own wealth in the possession of these twenty-one big pieces of gold take possession of him. Side by side57 with the fear of not being rescued stood the vision of the possibilities that lay in them. Each one weighed as much as three twenty-franc pieces. Six hundred and three francs; with that what might he not do! It was the only big bit of luck that had ever fallen in his way, and it would be doubly bitter to die with his luck in his hands.

And, still, as he watched, the sail grew. The vessel was not nearly so far off as she appeared; for the boat gave a low horizon. For this reason, too, she seemed bigger than she really was. That she was heading straight for the boat he could not doubt, yet he stood torn by the fear that she would miss him, pass him by, not sight him.

His imaginative mind saw her passing, saw her fading away, saw himself standing and calling after her and cursing her; so vivid was the obsession that for a moment, as he drew the picture, blazing wrath shot up in his heart towards her captain, curses rose to his lips, and sweat started on his brow.

Then he wiped his face with his coat sleeve, and unable to remain in idleness a moment longer, took the sculls and headed the boat for the point from which the vessel was approaching.

Useless, the moment his back was turned on the sail it was gone from his mind as from his sight. He had to keep it in view and shifting his position with the sculls half drawn in, he sat watching.

He had not so good an horizon sitting as standing, yet the sail had sensibly increased in size even allowing for the altered elevation.

With a dip of the sculls he kept the boat so that he was always facing the approaching vision, and sitting thus the picture before him resolved itself into three components: the after part of the boat, white, clean-scoured by spray,58 and burning in the sun with the exception of the space covered by his shadow; the blue of sea and sky; the ship.

Seated, with the sculls ready to correct the boat when she twisted to the wind and the current, his eyes passed from the boat to the far-off ship, from the ship to the sea and sky.

And still she grew, as a child grows in the womb, as an idea in the mind, adding member to member, significance to significance. He could see now the fore topsail distinct from the fore course. She was a square rigged vessel as to the fore part, but coming as she was, the spread of fore and topsails screened her rig.

She had altered, too, in colour; the frost white star was now a truncated pyramid of pale but brilliant rose, around which the deep blue heart of the sky paled to emerald by contrast.

And still she grew, motionless, or seeming not to move, yet becoming more definite, expanding as a bud expands, voiceless, an............