Thirty rounds lower, I stepped off on the
PIERRES PERDUES of the foundation; a dumb helmeted figure took me
by the hand, and made a gesture (as I read it) of encouragement;
and looking in at the creature's window, I beheld the face of Bain.
There we were, hand to hand and (when it pleased us) eye to eye;
and either might have burst himself with shouting, and not a
whisper come to his companion's hearing. Each, in his own little
world of air, stood incommunicably separate.
Bob had told me ere this a little tale, a five minutes' drama at
the bottom of the sea, which at that moment possibly shot across my
mind. He was down with another, settling a stone of the sea-wall.
They had it well adjusted, Bob gave the signal, the scissors were
slipped, the stone set home; and it was time to turn to something
else. But still his companion remained bowed over the block like a
mourner on a tomb, or only raised himself to make absurd
contortions and mysterious signs unknown to the vocabulary of the
diver. There, then, these two stood for awhile, like the dead and
the living; till there flashed a fortunate thought into Bob's mind,
and he stooped, peered through the window of that other world, and
beheld the face of its inhabitant wet with streaming tears.
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