CHAPTER II
The night was calm, and in the purple, star-filled sky the moon was
rising. It was at the full. The naphtha launch was on the river,
but it moved silently; current was with it, and the light airs
favourable, so there was no need of the engine; one single sail
carried the boat easily over the buoyant water. The stars and the
rising moon gleamed in the smooth, black ripples. Stanhope sat in
the boat thinking, wrapped in a cruel reverie.
He felt he had sailed the craft of his life too near the perilous
shore of unconventionality, and now he saw the rocks ahead of him
plainly, on which it would be torn in pieces. Yet how to turn back,
or move the helm to steer away from them?
"A month ago," he thought, as his eye caught the reflection of the
rising moon in the water, "when that moon was young, I was free.
Not a soul cared for me, whether I lived or died, and I cared for
no one." Now there was one, he knew, who lived upon his coming,
whose feet ran to meet him, whose eyes strained their vision to see
his first approach. And he, too; he was no longer free. His heart
went out to that other heart, beating for him alone so truly, so
faithfully, full of such unquestioning adoration and obedience, in
mud-walled sun-parched Omdurman.
When the launch touched the bank, he sprang out and walked swiftly
up to their usual meeting-place: the deserted mud enclosure of a
deserted hut--an unlovely meeting-place enough--but filled with the
sweet air of the desert night and the royal light of the stars.
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