“And the most dreary and generally damnable,” Ned agreed with enthusiasm. “Why didn’t you tell me this before? Muchinoff Island isn’t anything in my young life. I picked it out as a starting point simply because it was the farthest north of the Skopins, but since there seems to be plenty of territory——”
“It will make you hump some to cover all de good territory now, including some of the best of de Aleuts, and get around Alaskan Peninsula before winter sets in, in earnest. Tzar Island is yust to our nort’east. Shall I head toward it?”
“How long will it take——”
“Depends on de wind. Dis is a ticklish stretch of water in here, shallow in spots, but safe enough, I guess. I think we can skim along and make it in long before dawn.”
“Then do it!” Ned’s face suddenly brightened. “The sooner I can shake my legs on shore, the better I’ll like it.”
The seaman left him, and for a moment Ned stood almost drunk with exultation on the deck. Even now they were nearing the journey’s end. A few hours more, and they could turn back from this dreary, accursed wintry sea,—this gray, unpeopled desolation that had chilled his heart. It was true that the long journey home, broken by many stops, still lay before, but at least he would face the south! Once on his native shores, forever out of this twilight land and away from its voice of reproach, he could be content with his old standards, regain his old self-confidence. He could take up his old life where he had left it, forgetting these desolate wastes as he would a dream.
He was a fool ever to regret his wasted days! He laughed at himself for ever giving an instant’s thought to his father’s doleful words. The worst of the journey was over, they had only to go back the way they had come; and his puzzling sense of weakness, his premonition of disaster, most of all his superstitious fear of death had been the veriest nonsense. His imagination had simply got out of bounds.
The old Charon! He had been afraid of her name. Seemingly he had forgotten, for the time, that he was a man of the twentieth century, the product of the most wonderful civilization the world had ever seen. He had been frightened by old bogeys, maudlin with time-worn sentiments. And now his old egotism had returned to him, seemingly unshaken.
Presently he turned, made his way into the hold, and opened one of a pile of iron-bound wooden cases. When he returned to the dining saloon he carried a dark bottle in each hand.
“All hands celebrate to-night!” he cried. “We’re going to go home!”