But she hung on to her
lines with the grip of death. Dan stood at his mate's side, his eyes
fixed straight ahead into the darkness. He had cast his die; he had
chosen his lot--now the toll was to be paid. He thought, too, of the
men who, without question, had taken their stand with him. He reached
out his left hand and placed it gently on his mate's shoulder.
"Good boy, old Mul," he said, in words which, however inadequate,
revealed all the heart of his meaning. And Mulhatton simply shifted
his feet and gazed ahead, his hard, light eyes as expressionless as
marble disks.
The dawn came filtering across the raven waters as the bloodless hand
of an old man quivers across a chess-board,--gray dawn, cold dawn, even
more merciless than the night, in that it heralded the rise of the sun
to smile over the evil wrought in the darker hours. Astern, the white
yacht alternately pierced the sky with her bow and sought the depths.
Suddenly a long, triumphant scream of a whistle rang across the dawn--a
roll of water parted a retiring wave. The big white yacht moved of her
own power. Again the whistle sounded, as though in joy that the vessel
had at last found herself. Once more. . . . She mounted the waves in
proud defiance. . . . The tow-lines slackened.
"Cast off, cast off!" megaphoned an officer, while two of his sailors
threw the ends of the cables into the sea.
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