Night was unfolding her wings over the quiet sea. Purple, dark and smooth, the circling expanse of glassy stillness met the sky rim² all round in an unbroken line, like the edge of some cloud-towering plateau, inaccessible³ to all the rest of the world. A few lingering streaks⁴ of fading glory laced the western verge⁵, reflecting splashes of subdued⁶ colour half-way across the circle, and occasionally catching⁷ with splendid but momentary⁸ effect the rounded shoulder of an almost imperceptible swell⁹. Their departure was being noted¹⁰ with wistful eyes by a little company of men and one woman, who, without haste and a hushed solemnity as of mourners at the burial of a dear one, were leaving their vessel¹² and bestowing¹³ themselves in a small boat which lay almost motionless alongside. There was no need for haste, for the situation had been long developing. The brig was an old one, whose owner was poor and unable to spare sufficient from her scanty¹⁴ earnings¹⁵ for her proper upkeep. So she had been gradually going from bad to worse, not having been strongly built of hard wood at first, but pinned together hastily by some farmer-shipbuilder-fisherman up the Bay of Fundy, mortgaged strake by strake, like a

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