When the midnight hour had nearly arrived she prepared to depart, but after she had already set her foot on the edge of the boat she returned to the grassy seat.  She would wait a little longer yet.  Then there would be nothing which could give Hermon a right to consideration; then she might let loose upon him the avenging powers at her command.

Ledscha again gazed over the calm landscape, but in the wild tumult of her heart she no longer distinguished the details upon which her eyes rested.  Doubtless she saw the light mists hovering like ghosts, or the restless shades of the unburied dead, over the shining expanse before her, and the filmy vapours that veiled the brightness of the stars, but she had ceased to question the heavenly bodies about the time.

What did she care for the progress of the hours, since the constellation of Charles’s Wain showed her that it was past midnight?

The moon no longer stood forth in sharp outlines against the deep azure of the vaulted sky, but, robbed of its radiance, floated in a circle of dimly illumined mists.

Not only the feelings which stirred Ledscha’s soul, but the scene around her, had gained a totally different aspect.

Since every hope of the happiness awaiting her was destroyed, she no longer sought to palliate the wrongs Hermon had inflicted upon her.  While dwelling on them, she by no means forgot the trivial purpose for which the artist intended to use her charms; and when she again gazed up at the slightly-clouded sky, the shrouded moon no longer reminded her of the silver orb between the horns of Astarte.

She did not ask herself how the transformation had occurred, but in its place, high above her head, hung a huge gray spider.  Its gigantic limbs extended over the whole firmament, and seemed striving to clutch and stifle the world beneath.  The enormous monster was weaving its gray net over Tennis, and all the islands in the water, the Pelican Island, and she herself upon the seat of turf, and held them all prisoned in it.

It was a horrible vision, fraught with terrors which, even when she shut her eyes in order to escape it, showed very little change.

Assailed by anxious fears, Ledscha started up, and a few seconds later was urging her boat with steady strokes toward the Owl’s Nest.

Even now lights were still shining from the Alexandrian’s tent through the sultry, veiled night.

There seemed to be no waking life on the pirates’ island.  Even old Tabus had probably put out the fire and gone to sleep, for deathlike silence and deep darkness surrounded it.

Had Hanno, who agreed to meet her here after midnight, also failed to come?  Had the pirate learned, like the Greek, to break his promise?

Only half conscious what she was doing, she left the boat; but her slender foot had scarcely touched the land when a tall figure emerged from the thicket near the shore and approached her through the darkness.