The eyebrows, too, had given in, and narrow lines of Vandyke brown
meandered down Lady Kirkbank's cheeks. The frizzy hair had gone
altogether wrong, and had a wild look, suggestive of the witches in
Macbeth, and the scraggy neck and poor old shoulders showed every year
of their age in the ghastly morning light.
Lesbia waited in the saloon till Lady Kirkbank had bolted herself into
her cabin, and then she went up to the deck wrapped in her satin-lined,
fur-bordered cloak, and coiled herself in a bamboo arm-chair, and
nestled her bare head into a Turkish pillow, and tried to sleep, there
with the cool morning breeze blowing upon her burning forehead, and the
plish-plash of seawater soothing her ear.
There were only three or four sailors on deck, weird, almost
diabolical-looking creatures, Lesbia thought, in striped shirts, with
bare arms, of a shining bronze complexion, flashing black eyes, sleek
raven hair, a sinister look. What species of men they were--Mestizoes,
Coolies, Yucatekes--she knew not, but she felt that they were something
wild and strange, and their presence filled her with a vague fear.
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