He drew his frame erect and began to whistle, lifting his eyes to the swelling sails. Then Alice took the guitar from a sheltered place and caught the accompaniment. And presently they began to sing.
"'Twas a gallant bark, with a crew as brave
As ever launched on the seething wave."
The Phantom swung out from the old monastery on Priest Point, and coming around, raced back before the still freshening wind. They skirted the Olympia peninsula, and moved on up the narrowing arm. Here were the white walls of the capitol, rising from a grove of young firs, and across the channel opened the wooded capes off Cleale Place. Then came the promontory, breaking from Tumwater ridge; the Indian burial ground, where the blankets, which screened the canoes of the dead in the treetops, hung against the dark face of the bluff like gaily painted squares. And at last the yacht began to feel a back current and stalked gently up towards the white mills.
This was that "cradle" out of which Forrest had stepped, and there off the bow rose the glooming cliffs, where the lower Des Chutes hung a curtain of roped pearls, and the long pale lips of the rapids curled and menaced below.
Stratton took the guitar and repeated the tune, droning a pleasing undernote. And presently Louise awakened, and the receding promontory, catching the contralto, held the song a tragic moment and returned it transformed to a requiem.
"For the white squall rides on the surging wave,
And the bark is gulfed in an ocean's grave,
In an ocean's grave; in an ocean's grave."
But the soprano was silent.
CHAPTER XI
THE HOUSE-RAISING
"I've travelled all over ther country, prospectin'
an' diggin' fur gold;
I've tunnelled, hydraulicked an' cradled, an' I hev
be'n frequently sold.
An' I hev be'n frequently s-o-old, an' I hev be'n
frequently sold,
I've tunnelled, hydraulicked an' cradled, an' I hev
be'n frequently sold."