sed sailing date, whereas the Sybarite had a
rendezvous to keep with her owner at a certain hour of a certain night,
an appointment carefully calculated with consideration for the phase of
the moon and the height of the tide, therefore not readily to be
altered.

After dinner on that seventh day, a meal much too long drawn out for
Lanyard's liking, and marked to boot by the consumption of much too
much champagne, he left the main saloon the arena of an impromptu poker
party, repaired to the quarterdeck, and finding a wicker lounge chair
by the taffrail subsided into it with a sigh of gratitude for this
fragrant solitude of night, so soothing and serene.

The Sybarite, making easy way through a slight sea, with what wind
there was--not much--on the port bow, rolled but slightly, and her
deliberate and graceful fore-and-aft motion, as she swung from crest to
crest of the endless head-on swells, caused the stars to stream above
her mast-heads, a boundless river of broken light. The pulsing of the
engines, unhasting, unresting, ran through her fabric in ceaseless
succession of gentle tremors, while the rumble of their revolutions
resembled the refrain of an old, quiet song. The mechanism of the
patent log hummed and clicked more obtrusively. Directly underfoot the
screw churned a softly clashing wake. From the saloon companionway
drifted intermittently a confusion of voices, Liane's light laughter,
muted clatter of chips, now and then the sound of a popping cork.
Forward the ship's bell sounded two double strokes, then a single,
followed by a wail in minor key: "Five bells and all's well!" ... And
of a sudden Lanyard suffered the melancholy oppression of knowing his
littleness of body and soul, the relative insignificance even of the
ship, that impertinent atom of human organization which traversed with
unabashed effrontery the waters of the ages, beneath the shining
constellations of eternity. In profound psychical enervation he
perceived with bitterness and despair the enormous futility of all
things mortal, the hopelessness of effort, the certain black defeat
that waits upon even what men term success.

He felt crushed, spiritually invertebrate, destitute of object in
existence, bereft of all hope. What mattered it whether he won or lost
in this stupid contest whose prize was possession of a few trinkets set
with bits of glittering stone? If he won, of what avail? What could it
profit his soul to make good a vain boas