he was chanting in perfect tonelessness, when St. George cried out. The others sprang to their feet.
"Lights!" said St. George, and gave the glass to Amory, his hand trembling, and very nearly snatched it back again.
Far to the southeast, faint as the lost Pleiad, a single golden point pricked the haze, danced, glimmered, was lost, and reappeared to their eager eyes. The impossibility of it all, the impossibility of believing that they could have sighted the lights of an island hanging there in the waste and hitherto known to nobody simply because nobody knew the truth about the Fourth Dimension did not assail them. So absorbed had St. George become in the undertaking, so convincing had been the events that led up to it, and so ready for anything in any dimension were his companions, that their excitement was simply the ancient excitement of lights to the mariner and nothing more; save indeed that to St. George they spoke a certain language sweeter than the language of any island lying in the heart of mere science or mere magic either.
When it became evident that the lights were no will-o'-the-wisps, born of the moon and the void, but the veritable lights that shine upon harbours, Bennietod tumbled below for Jarvo, who came on deck and gazed and doubted and well-nigh wept for joy and poured forth strange words and called aloud for Akko. Akko came and nodded and showed white teeth.
"To-morrow," he said only.
Barnay came.
"Fwhat matther?" He put it cynically, scowling critically at Jarvo and Akko. "All in the way av fair fight, that'll be about Mor-rocco, if I've the full av my wits about me, an' music to my eyes, by the same token."
Jarvo fixed him with his impenetrable look.
"It is the light of the king's palace on the summit of Mount Khalak," he announced simply.
The light of the king's palace. St. George heard and thrilled with thanksgiving. It would be then the light at her very threshold, provided the impossible is possible, as scientists and devotees have every reason to think. But was she there--was she there? If there was an oracle for the answer, it was not St. George. The little white stars danced and signaled faintly on the far horizon. Whatever they had to reveal was for nearer eyes than his.
The glass passed from hand to hand, and in turn they all swept the low sky where the faint points burned; but when some one had cried that the lights were no longer visible, and the others had verified the cry by looking blankly into a sudden waste of milky black--black water, pale light--and turned baffled eyes to Jarvo, the little man spoke smoothly, not even reaching a lean, brown hand for the glass.