"Do as you like, mother," sighed Glory Goldie wearily, perceiving that here was something which she could not combat. And perhaps she, too, may have felt that their treatment of the father was outrageous.
No time was granted them for amends. Jan did not want to lose his whole life's happiness a second time, so with a bound he leaped from the pier into the lake.
Perhaps he intended to swim out to the boat. Or maybe he just felt that he could not endure living any longer.
Loud shrieks went up from the pier. Instantly a boat was sent out, and the little freight steamer lay by and put out her skiff.
But Jan sank at once and never rose to the surface. The imperial stick and the green leather cap lay floating on the waves, but the Emperor himself had disappeared so quietly, so beyond all tracing, that if these souvenirs of him had not remained on top of the water, one would hardly have believed him gone.
HELD!
It seemed extraordinary to many that Glory Goldie of Ruffluck should have to stand at the Borg pier day after day, watching for one who never came.
Glory Goldie did not stand there waiting on fine light summer days either! She was on the pier in bleak and stormy November and in dark and cold December. Nor did she have any sweet and solacing dreams about travellers from a far country who would step ashore here in pomp and state. She had eyes and thoughts only for a boat that was being rowed back and forth on the lake, just beyond the pier, dragging for the body of a drowned man.
In the beginning she had thought that the one for whom she waited would be found immediately the dragging was begun. But such was not the case. Day after day a couple of patient old fishermen worked with grappling hooks and dragnets, without finding a trace of the body.
There were said to be two deep holes at the bottom of the lake, close to the Borg pier, and some folks thought Jan had gone down into one of them. Others maintained there was a strong under-tow here at the point which ran farther in, toward Big Church Inlet, and that he had been carried over there. Then Glory Goldie had the draglines lengthened, so that they would reach down to the lowest depths of the lake, and she ordered every foot of Big Church Inlet dragged; yet she did not succeed in bringing her father back into the light of day.