“Surely, Doctor, you can’t mean you’d cast children into the sea for being playful?” said a lady, leaning from her chair toward him with a smile inviting him to say more. But the doctor merely mumbled and went on reading the memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini.
At the after end of the deck the captain, waving his hands backward in good-natured deprecation toward a group of passengers, was making as brief as possible his usual morning round. But he stopped when he met the direct look of the naval officer, bent down with his hands resting on the arms of the surgeon’s chair, and said something which was inaudible. All the reader of Amiel in the next chair could hear was, “Oh, about four. What with that and an S O S call, I had one hour’s sleep last night.” He stroked his nose and walked briskly away.
The reader of Amiel looked seaward. So there had been a call for help! But how impossible it seemed. The very ship appeared to be enjoying that sea. She was playful, rearing a little at times, and throwing dazzling, snow-like clouds. The children jumped and clapped their hands when a flight of spray leaped higher than usual. The very waves were chanting. They were running heavily past, with brilliant crests. Not far from the bows the ghost of a rainbow stood in an invisible mist above the riot of waters; it would fade, yet glow again, an intangible vision that was constant and motionless in that boisterous world, as though it were a symbol of the imperishable virtue of beauty. The radiant clouds moved in the leisure of eternity. On the horizon, under one of them, like a model fixed to the clear rim of the world, was a barque under all sails. He felt that dread and mischance could never persist in the light of that morning. There were no shadows. He had never felt better in his life. All was well. He closed the covers on Amiel’s so often melancholy conclusions, and watched a sailor at work who whistled, while busy about the falls of a davit. Near the sailor was the life-belt rack, where he had stood the night before. But the rack was empty.
He flung his book on his chair, stood and filled his pipe, and went up to the boat deck. The prospect was wider there, and he wanted to see as much of this beautiful world as he could. He paused up there to watch a quartermaster chalking the deck for quoits; there was to be a tournament that afternoon.
“Nasty night, last night, wasn’t it?” he said to the sailor. He meant nothing particular by that. As a fact, he had almost forgotten the night before. But one always talks of the weather to a sailor; and one ought to be polite to these fellows.
“Yes, sir, it was.”
“I could tell that, in my cabin.”
“I expect you could, sir.”
“Wasn’t there an S O S call? I think I heard some one mention it?”