“There’s nae haste. It’s hardly dark yet.”
Jean crossed the room to the window that looked out to the sea, and leaning on it, as she had a fashion of doing, softly sang the refrain of her song again.
Her father could not see her face, but he knew well the look that was on it at the moment,—a look which always pained him, and which sometimes made him angry; and the chances are he would have spoken sharply to her, if Hugh had not said after a little while, “But sailors don’t go to sea now to bring home king’s daughters, or even to fight battles with their foes. They go for wages, as the navvies do on railways, and the factory people in the towns. It is just the common work of the world with them as it is with others—buying and selling—fetching and carrying. There is nothing heroic in that.”
“Of course—just the common work of the world. But I would not think less, but more, of the courage and endurance needed to do it, because of that,” said Jean gravely, turning round to look at him. “It is just like the navvies, as you say, that they may live and bring up their families; and I think it is grand to leave their homes, and face danger, just because it is their duty, and with no thought beyond.”
“They get used to the danger, and it is nothing to them, I suppose. And it must be fine to be going here and there, and seeing strange countries, and all sorts of people. I should like that I would like to have gone with Sir Humphrey Gilbert, or Sir Walter Raleigh in the old times. That must have been grand.”
“Yes,” repeated Jean, as she came forward and sat down by the fire. “That must have been grand—the sailing away over unknown seas to unknown lands. They had hope, but they could have had no knowledge of what was before them.”
“What did they care for danger or hardship, or even death! They were opening the way to a new world.”
“Yes. If they could only have had a glimpse of all that was to follow! I dare say they did too—some of them.”
“Yes; Walter Raleigh looked forward to great things. It was worth a man’s while to live as those men lived. It was not just for wages that they sailed the sea.”
Mr Dawson laughed.