“Why, to—to save ourselves.”
He laughed. “Poor girl, do you feel dreadfully shipwrecked?”
“What, then, are they all running for?” She looked round bewildered.
“The engines have started. Tide’s nearly flood. Can you walk? That’s right.” They helped her to the deck. Long after midnight—and the world so bright! Oh, the blessing of the pure, cold air! While she breathed it in, O’Gorman stopped to whisper in Cheviot’s ear: “By George, you’ve saved a panic!”
“No,” says Cheviot, “it wasn’t my concert.”
CHAPTER XXI
In those last hours the great body of the floe had swung away to westward. It was the very rear-guard of the outgoing ice that had assisted at the concert. By this unfailing daylight you could see, an hour after midnight, the shining stretch of smooth water that lay between the Los Angeles and the invisible mainland. People hung over the ship’s side to watch the flood-tide swirl and churn under the propeller, while the “old sea tramp,” mustering every pound of energy, struggled to get free. Yes, it was exciting enough, but to the tall girl bending her hatless head over the railing at Cheviot’s side, not half as exciting as certain discoveries she was making without the aid of steam. Not alone in Norton Sound was the tide at flood. She drew closer to her companion with a mingled joy and shyness. Just that little nearer drawing, how strange that it should be the stuff of which so great happiness is made! Was he feeling it, too? Was he realizing? Or was all his soul down there in the turgid water foaming under the propeller’s beat. She remembered enviously how Louis’s little nephew would pat you on the arm if you grew abstracted, and remind you: “I’m here.” She longed to do the same. She even did it in a less direct fashion with the words: “I should think, by the feel of the air, there must be more icebergs on their way down.”