And perhaps, as the
story passed from lip to lip, men found enough justice in it to
believe it true. So it came down the centuries.
Will seafarers ages hence on dim October evenings, or on nights when
the moon is ominous through mist, red and huge and uncanny, see a
lonely figure sometimes on the loneliest part of the sea, far north of
where the Lusitania sank, gathering all the cold it can? Will they see
it hugging a crag of iceberg wan as itself, helmet, cuirass and ice
pale-blue in the mist together? Will it look towards them with
ice-blue eyes through the mist, and will they question it, meeting on
those bleak seas? Will it answer -- or will the North wind howl like
voices? Will the cry of seals be heard, and ice floes grinding, and
strange birds lost upon the wind that night, or will it speak to them
in those distant years and tell them how it sinned, betraying man?
It will be a grim, dark story in that lonely part of the sea, when he
confesses to sailors, blown too far north, the dreadful thing he
plotted against man. The date on which he is seen will be told from
sailor to sailor.
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