And that was why they were there now. He had hoped to save a part of this. But the pressure was too great. He had to have a given amount of revenue within a given time. Only by this means could it be secured. It was fortunate for him that he had this resource, doubly fortunate that it would go out on a rising market; for 1921 marked the turn of the tide.
All lost save honor! He smiled at the self-righteous expression. He could strike an attitude and utter that worn phrase. It was true. But was it valid,—either the attitude or the phrase? Yes, for himself. He was throwing away every material advantage that men live, work, fight for, plan and scheme and struggle to attain. And he did not do it because it was a reasonable, logical course. He did it to gain peace with himself, to retain his own self-respect. He was so made that he could endure anything but the thought of meeting an enemy and skulking away in the face of danger, of treachery to a trust, of taking an unfair advantage. Yet there were times when he felt that it was too great a price to pay for another man's blunder. And then he would feel as if he had done something, or contemplated doing something, of which he was ashamed. He began to realize that the cheerful giver gives nothing of value compared to the glow he gets in giving; and that the man who can cheerfully sacrifice his dearest possessions has never yet been born.
They were living once more in the old house. For how long Rod did not know and he tried not to think. The outcome was still uncertain; and where uncertainty lingers so does hope. At least, it was very pleasant to be there.
Late one afternoon when the Dent Island operation had got well under way, a fog swept like a wet smoke through the Euclataw Passage. It lifted, broke, opened and closed as if it were of two minds whether to lay over the channel a veil of obscurity or disperse in torn fragments. While it hovered and shifted thus uncertain, and the tiderace in the rapids slacked, a white yacht nosed into Mermaid Bay and felt her way alongside the float.
It was the Kowloon, come back like a ghost of other days. From the porch Rod, Mary, and Isabel recognized her through the fog haze as Grove's old yacht, which Laska had come into as the major portion of her husband's estate, and sold to her father.
"I wonder if they've come to hold out the olive branch to an erring daughter?" Isabel said lightly. "Dad might—possibly. Still, I don't think he'd care to trespass on your bailiwick, Rod, even for that."
"What has very likely happened," Rod shrewdly surmised, "is that she's on her way somewhere north and has simply taken shelter on account of the fog. This passage is dangerous in thick weather."
He sauntered away to the workings after a little. The Kowloon was of no interest to him, save as a reminder of old days. At the inner end of the bay already a widening field of stumps lifted flat heads among a litter of discarded tops and broken boughs over many acres. With tools and machinery his loggers were eating into the heart of that ancient forest as a mouse gnaws into a slice of cheese.
The fog lifted and closed intermittently. Rod came back in the course of an hour to find a stout figure with a cigar jutting from its teeth standing in the edge of the logging watching the high-lead donkey spit smoke and steam and shudder under enormous strains.
John P. Wall greeted him impassively. His small gray eyes met Rod's for a second, wandered off among the stumps, the dimly seen men, the black iron monsters huffing and puffing, the reddish-brown logs floating by hundreds in the bay, swept over the unkept grounds rank with grass, the gray stone house casting a great shadow, and came back to Rod.