It was a face that rarely displayed colour, but to-night it was flushed and vivacious.
Her wit was playing keenly, and she was enjoying the tilt as much as Wolf Larsen, and he was enjoying it hugely.

For some reason, though I know not why in the argument, so utterly had I lost it in the contemplation of one stray brown lock of Maud's hair, he quoted from Iseult at Tintagel, where she says: "Blessed am I beyond women even herein, That beyond all born women is my sin, And perfect my transgression." As he had read pessimism into Omar, so now he read triumph, stinging triumph and exultation, into Swinburne's lines.

And he read rightly, and he read well.

He had hardly ceased reading when Louis put his head into the companion-way and whispered down: "Be easy, will ye?
The fog's lifted, an' 'tis the port light iv a steamer that's crossin' our bow this blessed minute." Wolf Larsen sprang on deck, and so swiftly that by the time we followed him he had pulled the steerage-slide over the drunken clamour and was on his way forward to close the forecastle-scuttle.

The fog, though it remained, had lifted high, where it obscured the stars and made the night quite black.