"But so easy to do other things—to command ships, to fight, to shoot, to ride horses, to swim. I'm a swimmer, though it took me years to learn. I swam a mile once."
"You can beat me," answered Bridge simply. "I cannot swim at all."
"I am ambitious," she said, "to do what men do. My present fad is navigation. I shall never be satisfied until I have an ocean license."
"It is a great force in you, Miss Munson," said Bridge earnestly. "It is rare in women; but men feel it now and then. It gripped me seven years ago, and lifted me from the forecastle to the cabin. Do you remember?"
"What?" she asked.
"The man on lookout in the Umbria, on the night you came forward, when you thought I had called to you? Remember, it was foggy, and your father came after you."
"Was that you?" she asked. "Oh, now I understand. Oh, Mr. Bridge! No, I don't understand. I thought I knew you then, and I have thought since I came aboard that I knew you, that I had met you somewhere; but father—"
"Never mind, Miss Munson. These things are inexplicable. I thought, as the years went on, that it was a certain, curious sort of praise of myself, from an old lady I saw with your father that day, when I was aft scrubbing paintwork."
"My grandmother. She died last year."
"I thought it was her good opinion of me," went on Bridge earnestly; "but now I know it was your visit on the forecastle. Miss Munson, you were then the exact duplicate of a little girl who died at thirteen—a little girl that I worshipped as one of God's angels, and who went to the angels. Her name was Zenie. I have read of reincarnation. I wonder if it is possible that her soul returned—in you."