V
The Siberia Maru was prompt in casting off. Johnathan grew a bit abusive, then hysterical, as the hour drew near for departure. He clutched his boy as though he would hold him by force. Nathan waited until the last moment. Then he turned and extended his hand.
“Good-by, father,” he said.
Johnathan’s face resembled the hue of a drowned corpse when he said good-by in a whisper. Nathan hurried aboard. Hatches were being battened down, winches fastened, the gangplank raised, as he found Madelaine by the rail high on the promenade deck. Side by side they leaned over and watched the crowd below. In that crowd Nathan finally located his father’s upturned face.
Madelaine started to say something sympathetic to her lover, but the three-minute blast of the vessel’s departing whistle drowned out her voice.
Slowly the liner backed from her little stall in the great port. A steam tug at her prow turned her southward.
Nathan lost his father’s figure in the crowd, then found him again.
Johnathan was using his handkerchief alternately to smear his face and then wave the little flash of white as bravely as he could.
“Have I done right by him, Madelaine?” begged the son brokenly. “For heaven’s sake, tell me if I’ve erred?”
“You have not erred, Nathan. This is a world in which our sins punish themselves—always.”
Nathan looked back as the ship’s great engine-beat started, a throbbing which would not cease until they paused in Honolulu harbor, ten days later.
A lone figure was on the farthest point of the dock. A tiny white kerchief was rising and falling weakly. Then an incoming liner hid it from sight.