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Slowly, painfully, I began to free my right arm and hand from this paralysis. As I advanced in resolution, the Thing seemed to recoil. Inch by inch, I moved my hand across the bed toward my reading-lamp on the stand beside me. In proportion as I moved, the dreadful tentacles drew back and away. A last effort, and the chain was in my fingers. I jerked spasmodically.
The reading-lamp was never lighted. There was no season o' social converse. Every merchant but Eph Hill grew fat an' round, an' complained of indigestion an' sick-headache. Sam looked like a moored balloon. Seemed so their morals grew fat an' flabby an' shif'less an' in need of exercise. Their morals travelled too, but they travelled from mouth to mouth, as ye might say, an' very fast.
"I went into the study, and found him sitting close by the fire with his head down and his hands on his knees. On the table near him, beside Armadale's letter and my note, I saw, in the little circle of light thrown by the reading-lamp, an open railway guide. Was he meditating flight?
Lone Sahib caught it by the scruff of its neck, handed it over to the sweeper to be drowned, and fined the bearer four annas. That evening, as he was reading in his room, he fancied that he saw something moving about on the hearth-rug, outside the circle of light from his reading-lamp.
In many respects it was a singular room, but the feature which caused me the greatest amazement was this: it had no windows! In the deep alcove formed by the tower sat Van Roon at a littered table, upon which stood an oil reading-lamp, green shaded, of the "Victoria" pattern, to furnish the entire illumination of the apartment.
It was a reading-lamp and the bulb had been turned up so as to throw a beam on the curtain behind which the boy was sheltering. Behind the desk, straining back in terror, stood a slim, girlish figure. The details of her dress were lost in the gathering shadows, but her face stood out in the gloom, a pale oval. Bruce could see the dark line made by the lashes on her cheek.
When Smith had retired he was in no reading mood, and he had not even lighted the reading-lamp, but had left it pushed high up against the ceiling. It was the position of this lamp which had changed. For now it swung so low over the pillow that the silken fringe of the shade almost touched my friend's face as he lay soundly asleep with one lean brown hand outstretched upon the coverlet.
Nor was he agreeably impressed by the four flights of stairs, or by the appearance of the servant who answered his ring. "Won't do, won't do," he kept repeating in his own mind. He was shown into the sitting-room. It was in shadow, for only a shaded reading-lamp was lighted, and his first impression was of four windows; they appeared like four square panels of dark blue, patterned with stars.
It is true that tyranny was sometimes treated as coming from the heavens almost in the lesser and more literal sense of coming from the sky; a man no more expected to be the king than to be the west wind or the morning star. But at least no wicked miller can chain the wind to turn only his own mill; no pedantic scholar can trim the morning star to be his own reading-lamp.
Here I had been expecting a landsman's bed, with a book and a reading-lamp, surrounded by the friendly security of houses; instead, I was to go faring with the night wind into the mystery of the sea. It was a night of fitful moonlight, and Nassau, with its white houses and white streets, seemed very hushed and spectral as I made my way down to the wharf, vivid in black and silver.
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