The men talked in subdued tones, and I stood half-bewildered, with a bursting sense of relief, by Mrs. Knapp. At last she took her hands from before her eyes, and the first rays of the sun that cleared the tops of the Alameda Hills touched her calm, solemn, hopeful face.
“A new day has dawned,” she said. “Let us give thanks to God.”
CHAPTER XXX. THE END OF THE JOURNEY
For a few minutes we were silent. Water and land and sky started into new glories at the touch of the rising sun. The many-hilled city took on the hues of a fairy picture, and the windows gleamed with the magic fires that were flashed back in greeting to the god of day. The few cotton-ball clouds that lingered about the mountain-tops, sole stragglers of the army that had trooped up from the south at the blast of the rain-wind, turned from pink to white. The green-gray waters of the bay rippled lightly in the tide as the tug sent the miniature surges trailing in diverging lines from its bow. The curtain of mist that hid the Alameda shore rose and lightened at the touch of the warm rays. The white sails of the high-masted ships scattered through the bay, drooped in graceful festoons as they turned to the sun to rid them of the rain-water that clung to their folds. The ferry-boats, moving with mock majesty, furnished the signs of life to the silent panorama.
It seemed scarcely possible that this was the raging, tossing water we had crossed last night. And the fiery scene of passion and death we had just witnessed was so foreign to its calm beauties, that I could believe it had happened elsewhere in some dream of long ago.
I was roused by the voice of Mrs. Knapp, who sat at the head of the cabin stairs, looking absently over the water.
“I have not dealt frankly with you,” she said. “Perhaps it is better that you should know, as you know so much already. I feel that I may rely on your discretion.”
“I think I can keep a secret,” I replied, concealing my curiosity.