Isabel prepared the remains of the feast for Mr. Clatt, and asked Sugihara if he would object to relieving the watch, that the wharfinger might snatch a few hours' sleep. There was no longer any danger of fire except from the conflagration itself, and now that the dynamiting had begun in earnest it was possible that the flames would be isolated before midnight.
The Jap went off with the dish in one hand and a book in the other, hoping that he would be allowed to light a candle on the launch. He returned in a few moments, and for the first time he was smiling.
"Mr. Clatt will not give up his watch," he said. "He says he might miss the chance to put a hole in some—dago (his language was very bad, Miss). He says there's not a wink of sleep in him."
"No doubt but that he will hold on to it, unless the military step in," said Anne. "Then, I fancy, he would surrender very meekly. They have impressed a good many launches for prisoners and dynamite. But I hope not, for whether the fire comes up the hills or not, there is going to be terrible privation. Heaven knows how many days it will be before we have enough water even to drink, and I heard a little while ago that as soon as food comes in the authorities will establish relief stations, where everybody, from the millionaire to John Chinaman, will have to stand in line and wait for his loaf of bread. Wouldn't it be better for you to go at once?"
"I fancy I can endure as much as any one, and if I am driven from here I will go down to you. I shall go down anyhow when I have seen Mr. Gwynne. I do not propose to lie in a hammock while several hundred thousand people are sleeping on the ground. What do you take me for?"
"Somehow I don't see you as a nurse, or amusing children, or doling out bread and raiment. You would be much more in the picture encouraging Mr. Gwynne. However—I am going to impress your linen and a clothes-basket to carry it in. No doubt the philosophical Sugihara will help me carry it to the fort."
"Take what you like." Isabel directed her to the linen-closet, and went down to the veranda. She paused abruptly in the doorway. Victoria's face could be seen only in profile, but its expression, as she gazed down upon that tossing twisting furious flame ocean, needed no analytical faculty to interpret. It was voluptuous, ecstatic.
Isabel crossed the porch in a stride.
"What are you thinking of?" she demanded, imperiously.
Victoria did not turn with a start. She did not turn at all. "I am thinking," she replied, automatically, as if in obedience to the stronger will—"I am thinking that at last I understand what it is we are so blindly striving for from the hour when we can think at all; what it is—that unsatisfied desire that urges us on and on to so many fatal experiments in the pursuit of happiness. The great goal, the real meaning of our miserable balked mortal existence is not that dancing will-o'-the-wisp we call happiness, for want of a better name. It is Death."