yacht. They had left the Thames water some distance behind, and
were then in that part of the estuary where it is just possible in
mid-channel to descry either coast. The glorious rose of dawn was just
beginning to flame in the eastern sky. Lefevre looked about him, and
strove to shake off the sensation, which would cling to him, that he was
involved in a strange dream. There lay Julius or Hernando Courtney
before him; or at least the figure of a man with his face hid in his
hands. What more could be said or done?

In the meantime light was swiftly rushing up the sky and waking all
things to life. A flock of seagulls came from the depth of the night and
wheeled about the yacht, their shrill screams strangely softened in the
morning air. At the sound of them Julius roused himself, and raised
himself on his elbow to watch their beautiful evolutions. As he watched,
one and another swooped gracefully to the water, and hanging there an
instant, rose with a fish and flew away. Julius flung himself again on
his face.

"O God!" he cried. "Is it not horrible? Even on such a beautiful day as
this death wakes as early as life! Devouring death is ushered in by the
dawn, hand in hand with generous life! Awful, devilish Nature! that
makes all creatures full of beauty and delight, and then condemns them
to live upon each other! Nature is the sphinx: she appears soft and
gentle and more lovely than heart can bear, but if you look closer, you
see she is a creature with claws and teeth that rend and devour! I
thought, fool that I was! that I had found the secret to solve her
riddle! But it was an empty hope, a vain imagination.... Yet, I have
lived! Yes, I have lived!"

He rose and stood erect, facing the dawn, with his back to Lefevre. He
stood thus for some time, with one foot on the low bulwark of the
vessel, till the sun leaped above the horizon and flamed with blinding
brilliance across the sea.

"Ah!" he murmured. "The superb, the glorious sun! Unwearied lord of
Creation! Generous giver of all light and life! And yet, who knows what
worlds he may not have drawn into his flaming self, and consumed during
the aeons of his existence? It is ever and everywhere the same: death in
company with life! And swift, strong death is better than slow, weak
life!... Almost the splendour and inspiration of his rising tempt me to
stay! Great nourisher and renewer of life's heat!"

He put off his fur coat, and let it fall on the deck, and stoo