A circumstance which he had occasion
to recall ere long.
In the course of time the gates were again opened. The bridge
cleared of incoming traffic. As the cabby drove aboard the boat,
with nice consideration selecting the choicest stand of all, well
out upon the forward deck, a motor-car slid in, humming, on the
right of the hansom.
Maitland sat forward, resting his forearms on the apron, and
jerked his cigarette out over the gates; the glowing stub
described a fiery arc and took the water with a hiss. Warm whiffs
of the river's sweet and salty breath fanned his face gratefully,
and he became aware that there was a moon. His gaze roving at
will, he nodded an even-tempered approbation of the night's
splendor: in the city a thing unsuspected.
Never, he thought, had he known moonlight so pure, so silvery and
strong. Shadows of gates and posts lay upon the forward deck like
stencils of lamp-black upon white marble. Beyond the boat's
bluntly rounded nose the East River stretched its restless, dark
reaches, glossy black, woven with gorgeous ribbons of reflected
light streaming from pier-head lamps on the further shore.
Overhead, the sky, a pallid and luminous blue around the low-swung
moon, was shaded to profound depths of bluish-black toward the
horizon. Above Brooklyn rested a tenuous haze. A revenue cutter, a
slim, pale shape, cut across the bows like a hunted ghost. Farther
out a homeward-bound excursion steamer, tier upon tier of
glittering lights, drifted slowly toward its pier beneath the new
bridge, the blare of its band, swelling and dying upon the night
breeze, mercifully tempered by distance.
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