scarcely knew why--that Mr. Hurlstone had overheard the Senor's
invitation; nor could she tell why she was disappointed at not seeing
him. But he had not appeared on deck during the presence of their
strange visitors; nor was he in the boat which half an hour later
conveyed her to the shore. He must have either gone in one of the other
boats, or fulfilled his strange threat of remaining on the ship.
The boats pulled away together towards the invisible shore, piloted by
Captain Bunker, the first officer, and Senor Perkins in the foremost
boat. It had grown warmer, and the fog that stole softly over them
touched their faces with the tenderness of caressing fingers. Miss
Keene, wrapped up in the stern sheets of the boat, gave way to the
dreamy influence of this weird procession through the water, retaining
only perception enough to be conscious of the singular illusions of the
mist that alternately thickened and lightened before their bow. At times
it seemed as if they were driving full upon a vast pier or breakwater of
cold gray granite, that, opening to let the foremost boat pass, closed
again before them; at times it seemed as if they had diverged from their
course, and were once more upon the open sea, the horizon a far-off
line of vanishing color; at times, faint lights seemed to pierce the
gathering darkness, or to move like will-o'-wisps across the smooth
surface, when suddenly the keel grated on the sand. A narrow but
perfectly well defined strip of palpable strand appeared before them;
they could faintly discern the moving lower limbs of figures whose
bodies were still hidden in the mist; then they were lifted from the
boats; the first few steps on dry land carried them out of the fog that
seemed to rise like a sloping roof from the water's edge, leaving them
under its canopy in the full light of actual torches held by a group of
picturesquely dressed people before the vista of a faintly lit, narrow,
ascending street. The dim twilight of the closing day lingered under
this roof of fog, which seemed to hang scarcely a hundred feet above
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