Perhaps Kit exaggerated, but he had feeling and talent and he let himself go. He must banish the others’ moodiness and his own; he and they steered West, where better fortune was, and all must push ahead. He frankly used all the tricks he knew, but the emigrants were not critical, and the march fired their blood. The music got loud, as if it marked a triumphant advance, and then Kit took the fiddle from his neck. The others went where he wanted, and he knew where to stop.
People shouted and beat the tables, but Kit vanished behind the flag, put up his fiddle and started for the deck. At the rails by the ladder to the forward well he stopped. The spot was high, and across the well he saw the forecastle heave and plunge. Long, white-topped seas rolled up from the dark, broke against the bows, and melted in foam. Spray leaped up, blew like smoke, and beat the screens on the bridge. There was no moon, but the stars shone, and the combers’ broken tops cut the gloom. Kit felt the ship heave along, and to know he was going somewhere and went fast carried a thrill. The music had braced him and his heart beat with hope. In the West his luck would turn, and Evelyn was stanch. He began to think about her with romantic tenderness.
After a few minutes he saw he was not alone. Somebody leaned against the rails under a lifeboat, and he thought the figure was a girl’s. She turned her head, and Kit advanced.
“Miss Forsyth? I thought nobody was about. Why did you not speak?”
“In the dark I didn’t know you,” Alison Forsyth replied. “Then I rather wanted to be alone.”
Kit thought her voice trembled. Brisk steps beat the deck overhead and he heard a woman’s careless laugh. The first-class passengers walked about and joked, and, by contrast, the girl was forlorn.
“Oh, well,” he said, “I was going——”
“Now I do know you, you needn’t go,” Alison replied with some embarrassment.
Kit laughed. “An unconscious compliment carries weight, and I’d rather stay. Then, if you’re downhearted, perhaps you oughtn’t to be alone.”
“I was rather downhearted,” Alison admitted. “You see, my nerve wasn’t all I thought. I knew I was going to be ridiculous. In a moment or two I must have stopped; and then you came to help——”