"It's the other way about with me," said Mrs. March. "I shall not feel safe till I get home again. If the Lord meant for us to go wandering about on the face of the waters, he would have made them steady enough to build roads on. If he put people 'way on the other side of the earth, he meant them to stay there—and us, too," she added lamely, but with sufficient clearness.
Drew halted half-way up the companionway.
"You don't mean to say that you are afraid of the sea, Mrs. March," he asked, "after all your voyages?"
"I've been going with Cap'n March off and on for twenty-five—yes, thirty—years," she answered; "yet I never go out of sight of land without feeling that I'm making faces at my Maker and daring him to punish me."
"Oh, mother's fear is her most precious possession," said the girl, now for the first time coming forth into the cabin. "Nothing has ever happened to her at sea; and that, she feels, is the best reason for thinking that something is bound to happen the next time." She put her hand on the elder woman's shoulder and smiled down on her from her greater height.
"Well, that's reasonable," retorted Mrs. March. "I was never one to shut my eyes and claim it wasn't thundering. I've got my hearing. What does the good Lord give us feelings for if he doesn't mean us to use them?" With this challenge to unbelief in design in nature, she went to her room.
Captain March was still at the wheel when Drew returned to the deck. Medbury was forward with the crew, busily stowing the anchor. Little by little, Blackwater was disappearing behind the high white cliffs. Drew took up the glass which lay in its box against the frame of the sliding hood of the companionway and looked toward the village. Even as he looked, the white spire of his church disappeared from view. He saw it vanish, and put the glass down, to see the girl standing in the companionway watching the changing shore.
"I've seen the last of my church for three months," he said to her; "now I am really loose and free."
"It's good to get away from responsibility for a while," she said. "I feel now as if I could dismiss all thought and worry until I return. Then things may look different to me. I am going to think so, anyway."
"Hetty," said the captain, "just run down and get my pipe off my desk, won't you? You're younger than I am. Besides, I'm busy." He turned to Drew. "Ashore I smoke cigars mostly; my wife says a pipe's low. But here I'm master." He looked about his little kingdom with a mild, complacent face.