This did not appear particularly encouraging, but the orator went on: “Been over for a trip to the Old Country, and I’m glad I’m going back again. Went out with nothing except a good discharge, and they made me Sergeant of Canadian Militia. After that I was armorer to a rifle club. There’s places a blame long way behind the Dominion, and I struck one of them when we went with Roberts to Afghanistan. It was on that trip I and a Pathan rolled all down a hill, him trying to get his knife arm loose, and me jabbing his breastbone with my bayonet before I got it into him. I drove it through to the socket. You want to make quite sure of a Pathan.”
Miss Rawlinson winced at this. “Oh,” she cried, “what a horrible man!”
“It was ’most as tough as when you went after Riel, and stole the Scotchman’s furs,” suggested a Canadian.
The sergeant let the jibe go by. He said: “Louis’s bucks could shoot! We had them corraled in a pit, and every time one of the boys from Montreal broke cover he got a bullet into him. Did any of you ever hear a dropped man squeal?”
Agatha had heard sufficient, and she and her companions turned away, but as they moved across the deck the sergeant’s voice followed her.
“Oh, yes,” he said, “a grand country for a poor man. In the summer he can sleep beneath a bush.”
For some reason this eulogy haunted Agatha when she retired to her stateroom that night, and she wondered what awaited all those aliens in the new land. It occurred to her that in some respects she was situated very much as they were. For the first time, vague misgivings crept into her mind as she realized that she had cut herself adrift from all to which she had been accustomed. She felt suddenly depressed and lonely.
The depression had, however, almost vanished when, awakening rather early next morning, she went up on deck. A red sun hung over the tumbling seas that ran into the hazy east astern. The waves rolled up in crested phalanxes that gleamed green and incandescent white ahead. The Scarrowmania plunged through them with a spray cloud flying about her dipping bows. She was a small, old-fashioned boat, and because she carried 3,000 tons of railway iron she rolled distressfully. Her tall spars swayed athwart the vivid blueness of the morning sky with the rhythmic regularity of a pendulum. The girl was not troubled by any sense of sea-sickness. The keen north-wester that sang amid the shrouds was wonderfully fresh; and, when she met Wyllard crossing the saloon deck, her cheeks were glowing from the sting of the spray, and her eyes were bright.
“Where have you been?” she asked.
“Down there,” answered Wyllard, pointing to the black opening in the fore-hatch that led to the steerage quarters. “An acquaintance of mine who’s traveling forward asked me to take a look round, and I’m rather glad I did. When I’ve had a word with the chief steward I’m going back again.”