“You’ll go home,” said Johnny with suddenly renewed determination, “and you’ll go with that ancient alligator-skin traveling bag of your grandfather’s bursting with bales of money. Never fear.”
Reassured by his words, the girl bent her head forward on the table and fell asleep.
As for Johnny, he did not sleep. He waited, watched and dreamed.
The motion of the ship was something tremendous. Now she rose high in air to strike square into a great world of water; and now, lifting, lifting, lifting, she appeared to start on a flying trip to the stars, only at last to put her prow down as gently as a child drops his foot on a pebbly shore.
“She’s a grand old ship,” he thought to himself.
These were not his only thoughts. He thought of the great, gray-whiskered man and his granddaughter sitting there before him, the man who had given much to humanity and asked little in return.
Then he thought of the other one, their Unwilling Guest. “Providence,” he whispered suddenly. “Providence took a hand. If we had not picked him up; if he had sailed on the Arion he would now be at the bottom of the sea. Wonder what he will think of that?
“Providence,” he mused, “and back of Providence, God. God must have some work for that man to do, some great good work.”
Morning broke at last and with it the storm passed. The wind went down. The sun came out. The sea was a thousand mountain ranges rolled into one, and all tossing about, rising and falling, like a new-born world.
The sea calmed. Hazy clouds drifted along the horizon. The North Star, somewhat battered by the storm, but still a very seaworthy vessel, held steadily on her course.