It was the fourth day of the long calm. An awning had been rigged up on the poop for the passengers, and under it sat Lestrange, trying to read, and the children trying to play. The heat and monotony had reduced even Dicky to just a surly mass, languid in movement as a grub.
As for Emmeline, she seemed dazed. The rag-doll lay a yard away from her on the poop deck, unnursed; even the wretched box and its whereabouts she seemed to have quite forgotten.
"Daddy!" suddenly cried Dick, who had clambered up, and was looking over the after-rail.
"What?"
"Fish!"
Lestrange rose to his feet, came aft and looked over the rail.
Down in the vague green of the water something moved, something pale and long--a ghastly form. It vanished; and yet another came, neared the surface, and displayed itself more fully. Lestrange saw its eyes, he saw the dark fin, and the whole hideous length of the creature; a shudder ran through him as he clasped Dicky.
"Ain't he fine?" said the child. "I guess, daddy, I'd pull him aboard if I had a hook. Why haven't I a hook, daddy? Why haven't I a hook, daddy?-- Ow, you're SQUEEZIN' me!"
Something plucked at Lestrange's coat: it was Emmeline--she also wanted to look. He lifted her up in his arms; her little pale face peeped over the rail, but there was nothing to see: the forms of terror had vanished, leaving the green depths untroubled and unstained.
"What's they called, daddy?" persisted Dick, as his father took him down from the rail, and led him back to the chair.
"Sharks," said Lestrange, whose face was covered with perspiration.
He picked up the book he had been reading--it was a volume of Tennyson--and he sat with it on his knees staring at the white sunlit main-deck barred with the white shadows of the standing rigging.
The sea had disclosed to him a vision. Poetry, Philosophy, Beauty, Art, the love and joy of life--was it possible that these should exist in the same world as those?
He glanced at the book upon his knees, and contrasted the beautiful things in it which he remembered with the terrible things he had just seen, the things that were waiting for their food under the keel of the ship.
It was three bells--half-past three in the afternoon--and the ship's bell had just rung out. The stewardess appeared to take the children below; and as they vanished down the saloon companionway, Captain Le Farge came aft, on to the poop, and stood for a moment looking over the sea on the port side, where a bank of fog had suddenly appeared like the spectre of a country.