"Grub-box number two; port side by the rail."
"Idiot! You put them on the bottom of the box! The water's leaked through, and they're all mush underneath!"
"What's the diff? Stick the soft ones in the lobscouse!"
But after supper, when the sun had gone down, and the great stillness crept over them again, Natalie's arms dropped at her sides, Garth's pipe went out, and an unaccountable sadness fell on both. Then, their sporadic attempts to keep up the old, friendly rattle rang so false that both fell silent. Their camp of itself had a gloomy aspect. It was pitched in an elbow of the river, where a section of the cut-bank had sunk down, making a little terrace of grass a few feet above the water. Above, there had been a small grove of trees, through which a fire had some time swept, leaving only a few slender, charred trunks pointing askew against the slow, dusky crimson of the west. On the nearest and tallest of these wrecked monuments, immediately above their camp, as on a slender pedestal, sat a great owl, the only visible living thing in all the wide expanse, besides themselves. As long as there was light enough to see him, he crouched there, motionless.
Natalie sat huddled on a box, with Garth's coat thrown about her shoulders. Her chin was in her palm, and her lashes veiled rebellious, miserable eyes. There are moments when the most ærial spirits sink to earth; and just now Natalie could make no pretense at a flight. It was clear he loved her, as she loved him; what then were a few words five years old, to keep them apart? She tried honestly to arm her breast by thinking of the laws that separated them; but the insidious part of it was, they were worldly laws; and here the world was thrust out of sight. Why did he not take her in his arms, and let her heavy head fall on his shoulder? her heart reiterated; and that was the only voice she could hear then. Yet if Garth had betrayed any weakness on his part, Natalie would have been on the qui vive to repel him. The forces of her soul were thrown in a sad confusion; while her woman's instinct raged against him, that he could resist her, she loved him tenfold more for that very resistance.
And Garth—seeing her sitting there so small under his coat, and all relaxed and appealing, her mouth like an unhappy child's, and her eyes big with unshed tears—his arms ached to enfold her; his brain reeled with the intensity of his desire to take her as she trembled to be taken. But her helplessness, which tortured him, nerved him to endure the torture. In the turmoil of his blood he could not think coherently; but he could repeat to himself, dully, over and over: "I must take care of her! I must take care of her!" He busied himself with small unnecessary tasks; splicing the tracking line, chopping tent-pegs, cleaning the frying pan with sand.
Natalie disappeared within her tent—and cried herself to sleep. Garth, lying outside the door, though she attempted to smother the sound in her pillow, heard; and it was like little knives hacking in his breast. Sleep for him was out of the question; he was denied the relief of tears. He rose, when Natalie's quiet breathing told him she was asleep at last, and undressing, waded into the river, and swam back and forth until the cold water chilled him through. Brisk, silent exercise restored his circulation, and a pipe and communion with the stars quieted his nerves. In the end he toppled over all standing, and slept on the grass until daylight.
Natalie reappeared with the sun, brave and rosy again, and with little sign of the night's tumult, save in an added sense of gratitude toward Garth, which appeared in the pleasure she took in doing little things for him. His grayish pallor, and kind, tired eyes rebuked her sorely for having cast the whole burden on him. She vowed to herself it should not occur again.
To-day the character of the river changed little; only that the bends multiplied and sharpened; and where they were horseshoe curves yesterday, to-day they were hair-pin curves. Sometimes, just over the bank, they would catch sight again of a particularly marked tree they had passed a whole laborious hour before. Endless and futile were the calculations they made as to how far they had gone, and had yet to go.