He
recalled a childish superstition that it was good luck to see the new
moon clear. At any rate, as the sky darkened, the clear new moon brought
Leonard comfort and renewed hope.
With a grateful feeling of the providence of an Almighty that hung out
moon and stars, the youth glanced around the darkening horizon and
presently observed a tiny light far to the south. He stared at it quite
surprised, and then he chanced to see a star just above it. It was the
reflection of Sirius in Canis Major.
The beam of a star must lead any thoughtful soul into endless reveries.
Beneath its calm and infinite light, all human troubles fade to the
brief complaining of a child in the night. Death becomes a small,
unfeared thing, and life itself, the trail of a finger writing an
unknown message upon water.
Filled with such musings, the American noted with surprise that the
light on the sea which he had fancied to be the reflection of Sirius was
moving. It was not the reflection of a star.
It was a light moving in the gathering darkness.
What sort of light could it be? A Will o' the Wisp? A Jack o' Lantern,
some phosphoric phenomenon rising in the exhalations of rotting seaweed?
Ten minutes before, his excited imagination would have conjured up
hydras and dragons; now he scrutinized the mysterious illumination
unexcitedly.
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