“Guggenheim. What do you think? That fellow volunteered without being able to swim!”
There was a roar of laughing amazement.
“Yes, and when we were out there, and the waves were playing battledore with our boat, the fellow says, quite calmly, ‘Ob ve go opsot you fellows yoost most safe me.’ ‘Save yourself?’ says the officer. ‘I not can svim,’ says the volunteer, and then he told us quite firmly, ‘You shall safe me for dat I haf a vife and four childs wid a baby. You vill know me,’ he says, ‘from my cap.’”
As Cheviot at last pushed his way out of the crush, Hildegarde, close in his wake, still carrying the overcoat, followed him down the companionway. Near the deserted music-room door she slipped her hand in his.
“I’m too wet for you to come near.” But his eyes said nothing of the sort, and dripping as he was, he had her in his arms.
CHAPTER XXII
Late the next evening, standing with Louis and Captain Gillies on the bridge, Hildegarde saw ships on the western horizon. The fleet at last! anchored two miles off from Nome. It was bedtime, but quite impossible to sleep, though there would be no landing till next day. They said “Good-night” to the captain, and found their way to a corner of the deck, where alone together they might see the belated sun setting, and watch a pale-gold moon of enormous size riding portentously the clear-colored sky, too bright for stars. Hand in hand, hidden among the freight, they talked of the future, arranging it in the high fashion of the young, as though they two had been gods seated on Olympus. And as they talked the faint flush over yonder turned the purest rose, then deepened as each beautiful moment sped, till the sun, gone but now, hastened back like one who abandons a projected journey, and on the heels of his good-by comes shamefaced home. What would it be like, this day that he was bringing? What was waiting over yonder in that mysterious land, still in shadow, that skirts the hills of Nome? Just a little longer the weary passengers hung about the decks, while the blood-red sun peered at them over a violet sea, ready, when the shadow-curtain lifted, to clothe the naked truth of Nome with a final splendor. Whatever might come after, in this first actual vision of the place people had fared so far to find, it was to wear the hues of heaven. For the “boat-load of failure,” the dream they had called “Nome” was to die in a glory of gold and fire.