It seemed no chase at all; it seemed we had no
chance, as we lay there bound to iron pillars, and
fooling away the precious moments over tins of beans.
"Let them get there first!" I thought. "Let them! We
can't be long behind." And from that moment I date
myself a man of a rounded experience: nothing had
lacked but this--that I should entertain and welcome
the grim thought of bloodshed.
It was long before the toil remitted in the cabin, and
it was worth my while to get to bed; long after that,
before sleep favoured me; and scarce a moment later (or
so it seemed) when I was recalled to consciousness by
bawling men and the jar of straining hawsers.
The schooner was cast off before I got on deck. In the
misty obscurity of the first dawn I saw the tug heading
us with glowing fires and blowing smoke, and heard her
beat the roughened waters of the bay. Beside us, on
her flock of hills, the lighted city towered up and
stood swollen in the raw fog. It was strange to see
her burn on thus wastefully, with half-quenched
luminaries, when the dawn was already grown strong
enough to show me, and to suffer me to recognise, a
solitary figure standing by the piles.
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