There was a joyousness in her voice she made not the least attempt to conceal. She was joyous, alive, and she did not care who knew it.
Dennison acknowledged her greeting with a smile, a smile which was a mixture of wonder and admiration. How in the world was she to be made to understand that they were riding a deep-sea volcano?
“Nothing disturbed you through the night?” asked Cleigh, lifting the pin from the record.
“Nothing. I lay awake for an hour or two, but after that I slept like a log. Have I kept you waiting?”
“No. Breakfast isn’t quite ready,” answered Cleigh.
“What makes the sea so yellow?”
“All the big Chinese rivers are mud-banked and mud-bottomed. They pour millions of tons of yellow mud into these waters. By this afternoon, however, I imagine we’ll be nosing into the blue. Ah!”
“Breakfast iss served,” announced Togo the Jap.
The trio entered the dining salon in single file, and once more Jane found herself seated between 149 the two men. One moment she was carrying on a conversation with the father, the next moment with the son. The two ignored each other perfectly. Under ordinary circumstances it would have been strange enough; but in this hour, when no one knew where or how this voyage would end! A real tragedy or some absurd trifle? Probably a trifle; trifles dug more pits than tragedies. Perhaps tragedy was mis-named. What humans called tragedy was epic, and trifles were real tragedies. And then there were certain natures to whom the trifle was epical; to whom the inconsequent was invariably magnified nine diameters; and having made a mistake, would die rather than admit it.
To bring these two together, to lure them from behind their ramparts of stubbornness, to see them eventually shake hands and grin as men will who recognize that they have been playing the fool! She became fired with the idea. Only she must not move prematurely; there must arrive some psychological moment.