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They sat a moment on the rocks to recover their strength while the seagulls flew wailing over them and for the first time they took in the full gravity of the catastrophe. Every other man in the boat had perished so they judged, for there was no stir on shore.
Beltane's dagger was out and he rose up from the fern, crouched and strung for action but from the gloom near by rose a sudden, strange flurry amid the leaves, a whimpering sound evil to hear and swiftly ended, a groan, a cry choked to strangling gasp and thereafter silence, save for the fitful wailing of the wind a long, breathless pause; then, high and clear rose the cry of an owl thrice repeated, and presently small Prat was beside him in the fern again.
If the rage seething in his heart led him, in his drunken frenzy, to make Kuni feel its effects, too, the pleading glance of the blue eyes, still large and expressive, with which she had so often hushed the wailing child, sufficed to soothe him. Yesterday, for the first time, he had seriously threatened to drive the ropedancer away, and she knew that Cyriax was capable of anything.
Adding, a moment later: "But happier than the other. Poor little Desdemona!" How melancholy is the voice of a flood! Its resurgent dirge will move a new-born babe to frightened wailing, and stirs in strong men a vague uneasiness that roots in the vast and calamitous experience of the race.
Within herself she was listening and waiting listening for the first sound of shod feet, wailing for the moment when Winkleman should see fit to declare himself and end the suspense. So high was this inner tension that she fairly jumped from her chair as a demoniac shrieking wail burst from the forest near at hand. It was answered farther away. Other voices took up the cry.
With a faint, wailing cry, she dropped into a chair; her head fell forward on the table, and she burst passionately into tears. Captain Wragge was on his feet in a moment. She shuddered as he came near her, and waved him back vehemently with her hand. "Leave me!" she said; "leave me a minute by myself!"
The voice went on, growing into distinct articulation, but wavering about, now from one point, now from another, as if the owner of it were moving slowly back and forward. "Mother! mother!" and then an outburst of wailing. Sometimes but that must have been excitement I thought I heard a sound like knocking, and then another burst, "Oh, mother! mother!"
Indirectly they had brought about the death of the poor creature who for nearly half a century had lived alone with the beasts in these solitudes. And that one glimpse of the old man on the rock, the prayerful entreaty in his wailing voice, the despair which he sobbed forth when he found his tree gone, had livened in them something that was more than sympathy.
And thus the lad a-payeth her for all her love and sacrifice for the heart that stood betwixt him and evil, for the gold and jewels that she thought too mean to be set in comparison with him, for the weary arms that bare him, and the tired feet that carried him about, a little wailing babe for the toil and the labour, the hope and the fear, the waiting and the sorrow!
He passed thence to the banks of Egypt's Nile, and heard the lamentations of priests and wailing of women as a black ox, flower bedecked and wearing a collar encrusted with gems, was drowned in the turgid stream. Time and space ceased to exist for him.
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