"It's very wonderful," replied Hugh indulgently, as one so nearly a man should to one so merely a child. "I've never seen anything in this world that wasn't."
"Neither have I!" cried the girl and clapped her hands.
In that moment, for the first time, each thought how admirable the other, as yet so absurd, was—some day—probably—going—to be, and right there arose between them a fellowship more potent than either would recognize for a length of hours or days which is here best left unstated. Their two seniors saw; saw, but kept still—mais pourquoi non?—and why not?—while the great steamer breathed on, quivered on, breathed and quivered, on and on.
Ramsey transiently forgot them. "Do you, too," she asked her "labboardest," "feel yourself widen out of yourself and down and round into all this wonderful boat till you are it and it's all—you?"
"Yes," Hugh confessed, and they in turn were still, even though the seniors resumed converse, one mildly telling which sugar estates along the shore had been whose and the other recounting how their heirs had intermarried.
IX
SITTING SILENT
Thus they sat, Hugh and Ramsey, not recognizing that sitting silent is a symptom.
They sat and together felt their consciousness, his and hers, wing and wing, widen beyond their own frames to a mightier embodiment in this great cloud-white structure breasting the air that cooled their brows and cleaving unseen the flood so far beneath them. Together in this greater self they felt the headway of the long, low hull, the prodigious heart glow of the hungry fires, the cyclopean push of steam in eight vast boilers, the pulsing click and travail of the engines—whisper of valve and cylinder, noiseless in-plunge and out-glide of shining rods—the ten-foot stroke of either shaft and equal sweep of crank, the nimble beat of paddle-wheels and tumble of their cataracts, the tranquil creep of tiller-ropes, and the compelling swing and sage guidance of the helm.