It may be a year, or a day—
It may be to-morrow—God knows!
When, to answer, I’ll up and away,
But when and wherever it be,
This birthright is bound to foreclose—
I must go back to the sea!
“Well, yes,” commented Gale, as I sat down. “I seem to gather what you were driving at then, but it didn’t seem to me you meant quite the same thing the day we sailed.”
Edith Gale came out of a reverie to join in the laugh. I wondered if she knew what I had meant by my floundering about before beginning the verses—if she realized that a word, or perhaps three words, from her would mean more to me now than all the seas and lands of earth.
But Ferratoni, at a signal from Gale, had arisen. For days he had been as one in a dream. We had thought him depressed by the oncoming night. It seems doubtful, now, that he even realized that there was a night.
“Force!” he began. “In that word lies the secret of all the worlds and skies.