I
The next day they made Honolulu once more, with several hours to spare.
The Skipping Goone was all prepared, at a little before sundown, to sail away from the triumphant scene of Xenophon Curry’s first venture. Everything was ship-shape. The scenic effects, which had looked so tattered and shabby coming down through the dawn in trucks, were housed beneath their particular hatch in the umber cavern set apart for their stowage. The cargo was placed. The Custom House had pocketed its dues, issued a bill of health, and handed over the requisite clearance note, which Captain Bearman pinned to one of the leaves of the book in which he kept the log. An almost dense crowd was on the wharf to wave God-speed. It was a picturesque and really moving scene.
“You must remember,” Flora was saying, “that I always knew you could do it!” She spoke earnestly, and her fine eyes were unusually bright. She gestured a little.
Mr. Curry felt upon him a lingering sentimentality, and asked, his voice curiously afflicted with huskiness: “When do you suppose I’ll ever see you again?”
“Oh, perhaps much sooner than either of us dreams,” she replied, as cheerfully as she could considering the queer tug of emotion at her heart.
His look was wistful and solemn, though his wonderful smile broke through at last.
“Good-bye,” she said warmly. “I’ll be watching for your letters so eagerly, and you know I’ll be wishing you the very finest ‘success’ all the time, for there won’t be a day without its thought of where you are and what fortune is doing for you!”
She gave him her hand, and he held it just a moment with a lingering pressure. It was ever so much more intimate and understanding than the farewell in San Francisco. Then he sighed and went aboard his schooner. She smiled and nodded, her lips silently forming the word “good-bye” over and over again, long after the ship had sped beyond earshot; and he could see her handkerchief still hopefully fluttering when the Skipping Goone had passed the first bounds of the harbour and was beginning to settle to the heave of the outer sea.