"You'll get it from the north before to-morrow!"' he called.
Then the straining tug and the long wet line of working raft drew ahead while the sloop crawled on, close-hauled toward the south. Late that night, however, the mist melted away, and a keen rushing breeze that came out of the north crisped the water. The vessel sprang forward when the ripples reached her; the flapping canvas went to sleep; and while each slack rope tightened a musical tinkle broke out at the bows. It grew steadily louder, and when the sun swung up red above the eastern hills, she had piled the white froth to her channels and was driving forward merrily with little sparkling seas tumbling, foam-tipped, after her. The wind fell light as the sun rose higher, but the swinging sloop ran on all day, with blurred hills and forests sliding past; and the western sky was still blazing with a wondrous green when she stole into Vancouver harbor.
Carroll gazed at the city with open appreciation. It rose, girded with many wires and giant telegraph poles, roof above roof, up a low rise, on the crest of which towering pines still lifted their ragged spires against the evening sky. Lower down, big white lights were beginning to blink, and the forests up the inlet beyond the smoke of the mills had already faded to a belt of shadow.
"Quebec," he remarked, "looks fine from the river, clustering round and perched upon its heights; and Montreal at the foot of its mountain strikes your eye from most points of view; but I can't remember ever entering either with the pleasure I've experienced in reaching this city."
"You probably arrived at the others traveling in a Pullman or in a luxurious side-wheel steamboat. It wouldn't be any great change from them to a smart hotel."
"That may explain the thing," Carroll agreed with an air of humorous reflection. "I guess the way you regard a city depends largely on the condition you're in when you reach it and on what you expect to get out of it. In the present case, Vancouver stands for rest and comfort and enough to eat."
Vane laughed.
"I'm as glad to be back as you are; but you'd better make the most of any leisure that you can get. As soon as I've arranged things here we'll go north again."
The light faded as they crept across the inlet before a faint breeze, but when they got the anchor over and the boat into the water, Carroll made out two dim figures standing on the wharf.
"It's Drayton, I think," he said, waving a hand to them. "Kitty's with him."