CHAPTER 14.
THE BIRD OF PREY BROUGHT DOWN Cold on the shore, in the raw cold of that leaden crisis in the four-and-twenty hours when the vital force of all the noblest and prettiest things that live is at its lowest, the three watchers looked each at the blank faces of the other two, and all at the blank face of Riderhood in his boat.
'Gaffer's boat, Gaffer in luck again, and yet no Gaffer!' So spake Riderhood, staring disconsolate.
As if with one accord, they all turned their eyes towards the light of the fire shining through the window.

It was fainter and duller.

Perhaps fire, like the higher animal and vegetable life it helps to sustain, has its greatest tendency towards death, when the night is dying and the day is not yet born.
'If it was me that had the law of this here job in hand,' growled Riderhood with a threatening shake of his head, 'blest if I wouldn't lay hold of HER, at any rate!' 'Ay, but it is not you,' said Eugene.

With something so suddenly fierce in him that the informer returned submissively; 'Well, well, well, t'other governor, I didn't say it was.

A man may speak.' 'And vermin may be silent,' said Eugene.