The following morning Portland, Oregon, was reached, and here the car was side-tracked that its occupants might spend a day or two in the city. The Sonntaggs seemed to have many acquaintances here, for whom they held a reception in the car, gave a dinner at the Hotel Portland, and ordered carriages in which to drive about, all at Amos Todd's expense. In these diversions Alaric was at liberty to join or not, as he pleased, and he generally preferred to remain behind or to wander about by himself.
The same programme was repeated at Tacoma and Seattle, in the State of Washington, and at Vancouver, in British Columbia. In the last-named place Alaric's chief amusement lay in watching the lading of the great white ship that was to bear him away, and the busy life of the port, with its queer medley of Yankees and Britishers, Indians and Chinamen, tourists, sailors, and stevedores. The last-named especially excited his envious admiration—they were such big men, and so strong.
ALARIC MAKES HIS FIRST DECISION
At length the morning of sailing arrived, and as the mighty steamship moved majestically out of the harbor, and, leaving the brown waters of Burrard Inlet behind, swept on into the open blue of the Gulf of Georgia, the boy was overwhelmed with a great wave of homesickness. Standing alone at the extreme after end of the promenade-deck, he watched the fading land with strained eyes, and felt like an outcast and a wanderer on the face of the earth.
After a while the ship began to thread a bewildering maze of islands, in which Professor Sonntagg made a slight effort to interest his moody young charge; but finding this a difficult task, he quickly gave it up, and joined some acquaintances in the smoking-room.
Alaric had not known that the Empress was to make one stop before taking her final departure from the coast. So when she was made fast to the outer wharf at Victoria, on the island of Vancouver, the largest city in British Columbia, and its capital, he felt like one who receives an unexpected reprieve from an unpleasant fate.