A hard, frozen moonlight, from the steely disk sinking down the western sky, had slashed ink-black shadows of struts and stanchions across the gallery, and had flung _Nissr's_ larger shadow down the hungering abysses of the sky that yawned beneath.
That shadow had danced and quivered at fantastic speed across dazzling moonlit fields of cloud, ever keeping pace with the Sky Eagle, now leaping across immense and silent drifts of white, now plunging, vanishing into black abysses that showed the ocean spinning backward, ever backward toward the west.
With the coming of dawn, the shadow had faded, and the watchers' eyes had been turned ahead for some first sight of the out-riders of the attacking fleets.

Bohannan, a little nervous in spite of his well-seasoned fighting-blood, had smoked a couple of cigars in the sheltered gallery, pacing up and down with coat-collar about his ears and with hands thrust deep in pockets.

The Master, likewise muffled, had refused all proffers of tobacco and had contented himself with a few khat leaves.
Silence had, for the most part, reigned between them.

Up here in the gallery, conversation was not easy.

The hurricane of _Nissr's_ flight shrieked at times with shrill stridor and with whistlings as of a million witches bound for some infernal Sabbath on the Matterhorn.