I saw a lean, bright-eyed brown man with flat features, smoking a cigarette.
"Say! Just get next to those two Jews, Mike and Rebecca Winklestein. They're going to open up a sporty restaurant."
The man was a small bandy-legged creature, with eyes that squinted, a complexion like ham fat and waxed moustaches. But it was the woman who seized my attention. Never did I see such a strapping Amazon, six foot if an inch, and massive in proportion. She was handsome too, in a swarthy way, though near at hand her face was sensuous and bold. Yet she had a suave, flattering manner and a coarse wit that captured the crowd. Dangerous, unscrupulous and cruel, I thought; a man-woman, a shrew, a termagant!
But I was growing weary of the crowd and longed to go below. I was no longer interested, yet the voice of the Prodigal droned in my ear.
"There's an old man and his granddaughter, relatives of the Winklesteins, I believe. I think the old fellow's got a screw loose. Handsome old boy, though; looks like a Hebrew prophet out of a job. Comes from Poland. Speaks Yiddish or some such jargon; Only English he knows is 'Klondike, Klondike.' The girl looks heartbroken, poor little beggar."
"Poor little beggar!" I heard the words indeed, but my mind was far away. To the devil with Polish Jews and their granddaughters. I wished the Prodigal would leave me to my own thoughts, thoughts of my Highland home and my dear ones. But no! he persisted:
"You're not listening to what I'm saying. Look, why don't you!"
So, to please him, I turned full round and looked. An old man, patriarchal in aspect, crouched on the deck. Erect by his side, with her hand on his shoulder, stood a slim figure in black, the figure of a girl. Indifferently my eyes travelled from her feet to her face. There they rested. I drew a deep breath. I forgot everything else. Then for the first time I saw—Berna.
I will not try to depict the girl. Pen descriptions are so futile. I will only say that her face was very pale, and that she had large pathetic grey eyes. For the rest, her cheeks were woefully pinched and her lips drooped wistfully. 'Twas the face, I thought, of a virgin martyr with a fear-haunted look hard to forget. All this I saw, but most of all I saw those great, grey eyes gazing unseeingly over the crowd, ever so sadly fixed on that far-away East of her dreams and memories.
"Poor little beggar!"