The wind had died with the dawn, and the sea was abating. The Squalla went her way within the hour, and so did Thompson. There was still a small air out of the southeast, sufficient to give him steerageway in the swell that ran for hours after the storm. Between sail and power he made the Redonda Islands and passed between them far up the narrow gut of Waddington Channel, lying in a nook near the northern end of that deep pass when night came on. And by late afternoon the following day he had traversed the mountain-walled length of Toba Inlet and moored his yawl beside a great boom of new-cut logs at the mouth of Toba River.
Thanks to meeting the Squalla he knew his ground. Also he knew something of Sam Carr's undertaking. The main camp was four miles up the stream. The deep fin-keel of the yawl barred him from crossing the shoals at the river mouth except on a twelve-foot tide. So he lay at the boom, planning to go up the river next morning in the canoe he towed astern in lieu of a dinghy.
He sat on his cushions in the cockpit that evening looking up at a calm, star-speckled sky. On either side of him mountain ranges lifted like quiescent saurians, heads resting on the summit of the Coast Range, tails sweeping away in a fifty-mile curve to a lesser elevation and the open waters of the Gulf. The watery floor of Toba Inlet lay hushed between, silvered by a moon-path, shimmering under the same pale rays that struck bluish-white reflections from a glacier high on the northern side. It was ghostly still at the mouth of the valley whence the Toba River stole down to salt water, with somber forests lining the beach and clinging darkly on the steep slopes. A lone light peeped from the window of a cabin on shore. The silence was thick, uncanny. But it was a comforting silence to Thompson. He felt no loneliness, he whom the lonely places had once appalled. But that was a long time ago. Sitting there thinking of that, he smiled.
No man lives by, for, or because of love alone. Nor does a woman, although the poets and romancers have very nearly led us to believe a woman does. Yet it is a vital factor upon some occasions, in many natures. There had been times in Thompson's life when the passion Sophie Carr kindled in him seemed a conflagration that must either transfigure or destroy him. It was like a volcano that slept, and woke betimes.
The last two years had rather blotted out those periods of eruption. He had given her up, and in giving up all hope of her, Sophie and everything that linked her with him from Lone Moose to the last time he saw her had grown dim, like a book read long ago and put by on the shelf. In the fierce usages of aërial warfare distracted thought, any relaxing from an eagle-like alertness upon the business in hand, meant death swift and certain. And no man, even a man whose heart is sore, wishes to die. The will-to-live is too strong in him. Pride spurs him. To come off victorious over a concrete enemy, to uphold the traditions of his race, to be of service—these things will carry any man over desperate places without faltering, if he feels them.
And Wes Thompson had experienced that sort of vision rather keenly. It had driven him, a man of peaceful tendency, to blood-drenched fields. For two years he had been in another world, in a service that demanded of a man all that was in him. He was just beginning to be conscious that for so long he had been detached from life that flowed in natural, normal channels.
He was conscious too, of a queer, impersonal manner of thinking about things and people, now that he was back. He wondered about himself. What particular motive, for instance, had driven him up here? To be sure there was the very plausible one of obeying a physician's order about living in the open, of keeping decent hours, of avoiding crowds and excitement until he was quite himself again. But he could have done that without coming to Toba Inlet.
Of course he wanted to see Sam Carr again. Also he wanted to see Sophie. Why he wished to see her was not so readily answered. He wanted to see her again, that was all—just as he had wanted to see Canada and his aunts, and the green slopes of the Pacific again. Because all these things and people were links with a past that was good and kindly by comparison with the too-vivid recent days. Yes, surely, he would be glad to see Sam Carr—and Sophie. When he recalled the last time he spoke with her he could smile a little wryly. It had been almost a tragedy then. It did not seem much now. The man who had piloted a battle-plane over swaying armies in France could smile reminiscently at being called a rabbit by an angry girl.
It was queer Sophie had never married. His thought took that turn presently. She was—he checked the years on his fingers—oh, well, she was only twenty-four. Still, she was no frail, bloodless creature, but a woman destined by nature for mating, a beautiful woman well fit to mother beautiful daughters and strong sons, to fill a lover with joy and a husband with pride.
A queer warmth flushed Thompson's cheek when he thought of Sophie this wise. A jealous feeling stabbed at him. The virus was still in his blood, he became suddenly aware. And then he laughed out loud, at his own camouflaging. He had known it all the time. And this trip it would be kill or cure, he said to himself whimsically.