"You told me that more than a year ago, but I backed my skill against your prophecy."
O'Neil answered him gravely: "Men like you and me become over-confident of our powers; we grow arrogant, but after all we're only pygmies."
"If Nature beats me here, I'm a ruined man," said the engineer.
"And if you defeat her, I'm ruined." O'Neil smiled at him.
"Let's make medicine, the way the Indians did, and call upon the Spirit of the Wind to settle the question," Eliza suggested, with a woman's quick instinct for relieving a situation that threatened to become constrained. She and Natalie ran to Trevor's sideboard, and, seizing bottle and shaker, brewed a magic broth, while the two men looked on. They murmured incantations, they made mystic passes, then bore the glasses to their companions.
As the men faced each other Natalie cried:
"To the Wind!"
"Yes! More power to it!" Eliza echoed.
Trevor smiled. "I drink defiance."
"In my glass I see hope and confidence," said O'Neil. "May the storm profit him who most deserves help."