“Oh, yes,” said Hildegarde, “my suit-case and things. But father needn’t trouble to come below. I’ve had everything packed and ready for hours!” She smiled at Cheviot across the halting figure. “What kept you so, Louis? Couldn’t you find him?”
“You can’t get along very fast over there,” Cheviot answered.
“You couldn’t?”
“Nobody can. There’s a wall of stuff piled higgledy-piggledy for a mile along the shore.”
“Dingleys and McKeowns, and—”
“Yes, and grub. Tons of it. Hundreds of barrels of whisky. Thousands of bags of flour and beans piled higher than my head. Lumber—acres of it. Furniture and bedding, engines and boilers, mixed up with sides of bacon and blankets, and a sprinkling of centrifugal pumps and Klondike thawers. How they’ll ever sort that chaos—”
“The next high tide will save them the trouble,” said Nathaniel Mar.
“Well, it’s a queer sight. Hundreds and hundreds of people, Hildegarde, sitting on top of their worldly goods, looking as if they’d never stir again. Like so many Robinson Crusoes, each one on his own desert island, among the wreck of his possessions.” Hildegarde smiled. Louis was only pointing out that Nome justified his prophecy. A form of “I told you so.” But he was speaking to her father. “And the faces! You’re used to them, but I—” He caught Hildegarde’s significant little smile and deliberately changed the tune. “Of course there’s a lot of hustling, too,” he ended, stopping by the smoking-room door.
“Yes, the old story,” said Hildegarde’s father, wearily. “All land there free and equal from the common life of the ships. Twenty minutes, and some are masters and others are slaves.”