"Then you have missed a great deal. But the first time I go down to the Sound I'll take you; and Mr. Kingsley, my brother-in-law, will have us aboard the Phantom. Then, out past the old monastery on Priest Point, we'll catch a swinging breeze, and all the running waves will toss their whitecaps,—you'll like that, even if the scud whips your face,—and someone, my sister perhaps, will start 'The White Squall.' It's the best sea song, made for the accompaniment of water on a cleaving keel."
For a moment she forgot the boy. She stood looking off across the charred stumps and skeletons of trees, as though she saw far away that blue sea she loved, and expected to hear that rush and gurgle along a moving keel. And he, this urchin who had lived his life among the weasels and squirrels in the heart of the great forest, who knew nothing of whitecaps, to whom scud was a new and vague torment, waited with his ferret eyes upon her, sharp chin lifted, lips apart. Her glance fell. Their eyes met and she laughed. "Would you like to make that trip down to Puget Sound, Lem?"
He dropped his head, and slipping back to his place at her heels as she resumed the climb, answered with brief emphasis, "You bet."
At the top of the ridge the trail entered the forest. The boughs of the friendly firs clasped overhead; a carpet of needles was underfoot. Moss rioted everywhere, on logs, rocks, the trunks of the living trees. Still, it was less insistent than the salal, which pushed its stiff glossy leaves through dense growths of alder and hazel, and the fern, which sent up slender stems, forming a lattice for honeysuckle and pea, and high above her head spread umbrella fronds. It was cooler and she quickened her pace. Lem began to whistle, then to answer the birds, and presently she, too, was calling, cautiously at first, taking lessons from the boy, and all the wood was full of voices.
At length there was the noise of running water and they came down to a brook. It was their half-way place. Mid-channel, Lem had built a water wheel. He had set a squirrel trap on the bank, and a larger one for mink, and had made a bench for the teacher, by rolling a short log against a trunk, securing it with stakes. She seated herself and he waded out into the stream. He plucked a leaf from an overhanging bough, and shaping a drinking-cup, brought her a draught. She laid her hat in her lap and resting her head on the trunk, idly watched him while he examined the traps, and drew from a hollow cedar his alder pole, equipped with primitive line, and baited the hook with a grasshopper. But while he tried pool and shallow ineffectually, her glance moved absently up-stream, and presently she sang in a soft undertone:
She shone in the light of de - clin -
ing day, And each sail was
set, And each heart .. was ... gay:
Music fragment
The noise of running water became the music of the sea; the bole on which she leaned was a heaving mast, and the stir of hemlock boughs above changed to the bellying of voluminous canvas. Once more the moon hung low over the Tumwater hills, silvering the cove, and on the port bow the Des Chutes plunged out of blackness and swayed, sparkling, like a curtain of roped pearls between beetling cliffs. Her sister's contralto, swelled by Kingsley's tenor, took up the chorus, but clearer, close beside her, subduing his fine baritone to her own voice, sang Paul Forrest.
At last she drew a full breath and returned to the present. She brushed her hand across her eyes and looked at Lem. The next instant she was on her feet. She ran down the bank and out upon the stepping-stones, watching the boy. "Play him, Lem," she cried softly, "play him, tire him. Don't be in a hurry."