For the Term of His Natural Life

In the breathless stillness of a tropical afternoon when the air was hot and heavy and the sky brazen and cloudless the shadow of the Malabar lay solitary on the surface of the glittering sea.The sun-who rose on the left hand every morning a blazing ball to move slowly through the unbearable blue until he sank fiery red in mingling glories of sky and ocean on the right hand-had just got low enough to peep beneath the awning that covered the poop-deck and awaken a young man in an undress military uniform who was dozing on a coil of rope.Hang it! said he rising and stretching himself with the weary sigh of a man who has nothing to do I must have been asleep; and then holding by a stay he turned about and looked down into the waist of the ship.