hand on the prow and shoved the light boat out into the current,
calling softly:

"Good-bye, and good-luck."

"Good-bye, Mr. Stark. Thank you ever so much," the girl replied, too
numb and worn out to say much, or to notice or care whither she was
bound or who was her boatman. She had been swept along too swiftly
to reason or fear for herself any more.

Half an hour later the scattered lights of the little camp winked
and twinkled for the last time. Turning, she set her face forward,
and, adjusting the cushions to her comfort, strained her tired eyes
towards the rising and falling shadow of her boatman. She seemed
borne along on a mystic river of gloom that hissed and gurgled about
her, invisible but all-pervading, irresistible, monstrous, only the
ceaseless, monotonous creak of the rowlocks breaking the silence.

Stark did not return to his cabin, but went back instead to his
saloon, where he saw Poleon Doret still sprawling with elbows on the
table, his hat pulled low above his sullen face. The owner of the
place passed behind the bar and poured himself a full glass of
whiskey, which he tossed off, then, without a look to right or left,
went out and down towards the barracks. A light behind the drawn
curtains of the officer's house told that his man was not abed, but
he waited a long moment after his summons before the door was
opened, during which he heard the occupant moving about and another
door close in the rear. When he was allowed entrance at last he
found the young man alone in a smoke-filled room with a bottle and
two empty glasses on the table.