"I see you do not know," he said. "This is the letter Austerly sent me. As you will notice, it was at her request. She would not have minded your reading it."
Jimmy started as he saw that the envelope had a broad black edge, and his companion nodded gravely.
"Yes," he said, "there is neither tide nor fog where she has gone. There, at least, we are told, the sea is glassy."
Jimmy took the letter out of the envelope, and once or twice his eyes grew a trifle hazy as he read. Then he handed it back to Valentine, almost reverently.
"I am sorry," was all he said.
Valentine looked at him with the little grave smile still in his eyes. "I do not think there is any need for that. What had this world but pain to offer her? She has slipped away, but she has left something behind—something one can hold on by. What there is out yonder we do not know—but perhaps we shall not be sorry when we slip out beyond the shrouding mists some day."
Neither of them said much more, and shortly afterward Jimmy went back to the Shasta. Next morning he stood on his bridge watching the Sorata slide out of harbor. Valentine, sitting at her tiller, waved his hat to him, and Jimmy was glad that he had hurled a blast of the whistle after him when some months later he heard that the Sorata and her skipper had gone down together in a wild westerly gale.
In the meanwhile he proceeded to Vancouver, and after an interview with Jordan, who formally offered him command of the big new boat, took the first east-going train and reached Toronto five days later. An hour after he got there he hired a pulling skiff at the water-front, and drove her out with sturdy strokes into the blue lake across which a little cutter was creeping a mile or so away. He came up with her, hot and breathless, and the girl at the tiller rose quietly when he swung himself on deck, though there was a depth of tenderness in her eyes.
"Jimmy!" she said, "why didn't you tell me?"
Jimmy laughed. "You should have expected me," he said. "The six months are up."