Evelyn fancied that there was something behind all this, but it did not directly concern her and she made no inquiry. In the meanwhile they were driving on to the southward, opening up the straits, with the forests to port growing smaller and the short seas increasing in size. The breeze was cold, but the girl was warmly clad and the easy motion in no way troubled her. The rush of keen salt air stirred her blood, and all round her were spread wonderful harmonies of silver-laced blue and green, through which the straining fabric that carried her swept on. The mountains were majestic, but except when tempests lashed their crags or torrents swept their lower slopes they were wrapped in eternal repose; the sea was filled with ecstatic motion.
"The hills have their fascination; it's a thing I know," she said, to draw the helmsman out. "I think I should like the sea, too; but at first sight it's charm isn't quite so plain."
"You have started him," interposed Carroll. "He won't refuse that challenge."
Vane accepted it with a smile which meant more than good-humored indulgence.
"Well," he declared, "the sea's the same everywhere, unbridled, unchanging; a force that remains as it was in the beginning. Once you're out of harbor, under sail, you have done with civilization. It has possibly provided you with excellent gear, but it can do no more; you stand alone, stripped for the struggle with the elements."
"Is it always a struggle?"
"Always. The sea's as treacherous as the winds that vex it, pitiless, murderous. When you have only sail to trust to, you can never relax your vigilance; you must watch the varying drift of clouds and the swing of the certain tides. There's nothing and nobody to fall back upon when the breeze pipes its challenge; you have sloughed off civilization and must stand or fall by the raw natural powers with which man is born, and chief among them is the capacity for brutal labor. The thrashing sail must be mastered; the tackle creaking with the strain must be hauled in. Perhaps, that's the charm of it for some of us whose lives are pretty smooth—it takes one back, as I said, to the beginning."
"But haven't human progress and machines made life more smooth for everybody?"
Vane laughed somewhat grimly.
"Oh, no; I think that can never be done. So far, somebody pays for the others' ease. At sea, in the mine and in the bush man still grapples with a rugged, naked world."