"Steamer?" the man answered Hollister's inquiry. "Say, if you want to catch her, you just about got time. Two fellows from here left awhile ago. If you hurry, maybe you can catch 'em. If you catch 'em before they get out over the bar, they'll give you a lift to the float. If you don't, you're stuck for a week. There's only one rowboat down there."
Hollister had caught them.
He took a last, thoughtful look. Over the vessel's bubbling wake he could see the whole head of the Inlet deep in winter snows,—a white world, coldly aloof in its grandeur. It was beautiful, full of the majesty of serene distances, of great heights. It stood forth clothed with the dignity of massiveness, of permanence. It was as it had been for centuries, calm and untroubled, unmoved by floods and slides, by fires and slow glacial changes. Yes, it was beautiful and Hollister looked a long time, for he was not sure he would see it again. He had a canoe and a tent cached in that silent valley, but for these alone he would not return. Neither the ownership of that timber which he now esteemed of doubtful value nor the event of its sale would require his presence there.
He continued to stare with an absent look in his eyes until a crook in the Inlet hid those white escarpments and outstanding peaks, and the Inlet walls—themselves lifting to dizzy heights that were shrouded in rolling mist—marked the limit of his visual range. The ship's bell tinkled the noon hour. A white-jacketed steward walked the decks, proclaiming to all and sundry that luncheon was being served. Hollister made his way to the dining saloon.
The steamer was past Salmon Bay when he returned above decks to lean on the rail, watching the shores flit by, marking with a little wonder the rapid change in temperature, the growing mildness in the air as the steamer drew farther away from the gorge-like head of Toba with its aerial ice fields and snowy slopes. Twenty miles below Salmon Bay the island-dotted area of the Gulf of Georgia began. There a snowfall seldom endured long, and the teeth of the frost were blunted by eternal rains. There the logging camps worked full blast the year around, in sunshine and drizzle and fog. All that region bordering on the open sea bore a more genial aspect and supported more people and industries in scattered groups than could be found in any of those lonely inlets.
Hollister was not thinking particularly of these things. He had eaten his meal at a table with half a dozen other men. In the saloon probably two score others applied themselves, with more diligence than refinement, to their food. There was a leavening of women in this male mass of loggers, fishermen, and what-not. A buzz of conversation filled the place. But Hollister was not a participant. He observed casual, covert glances at his disfigured face, that disarrangement of his features and marring of his flesh which made men ill at ease in his presence. He felt a recurrence of the old protest against this. He experienced a return of that depression which had driven him out of Vancouver. It was a disheartenment from which nothing in the future, no hope, no dream, could deliver him. He was as he was. He would always be like that. The finality of it appalled him.
After a time he became aware of a young woman leaning, like himself, against the rail a few feet distant. He experienced a curious degree of self-consciousness as he observed her. The thought crossed his mind that presently she would look at him and move away. When she did not, his eyes kept coming back to her with the involuntary curiosity of the casual male concerning the strange female. She was of medium height, well-formed, dressed in a well-tailored gray suit. Under the edges of a black velvet turban her hair showed glossy brown in a smooth roll. She had one elbow propped on the rail and her chin nestled in the palm. Hollister could see a clean-cut profile, the symmetrical outline of her nose, one delicately colored cheek above the gloved hand and a neckpiece of dark fur.
He wondered what she was so intent upon for so long, leaning immobile against that wooden guard. He continued to watch her. Would she presently bestow a cursory glance upon him and withdraw to some other part of the ship? Hollister waited for that with moody expectation. He found himself wishing to hear her voice, to speak to her, to have her talk to him. But he did not expect any such concession to a whimsical desire.
Nevertheless the unexpected presently occurred. The girl moved slightly. A hand-bag slipped from under her arm to the deck. She half-turned, seemed to hesitate. Instinctively, as a matter of common courtesy to a woman, Hollister took a step forward, picked it up. Quite as instinctively he braced himself, so to speak, for the shocked look that would gather like a shadow on her piquant face.
But it did not come. The girl's gaze bore imperturbably upon him as he restored the hand-bag to her hand. The faintest sort of smile lurked about the corners of a pretty mouth. Her eyes were a cloudy gray. They seemed to look out at the world with a curious impassivity. That much Hollister saw in a fleeting glance.