Before him only shoreless seas.
The good mate said, “Now must we pray,
For lo, the very stars are gone.
Brave Admr’l speak.” “What shall I say?”
“Why say: ‘Sail on, sail on and on.’”
NOTE VII
JUMPING off the bed I instantly began to try to prepare myself for new adventures. As I had been lying on the bed thinking the thoughts above set down and working myself up to new heights of fancied grandeur some time had passed. Perhaps I had slept and awakened. At any rate it was now dark in the room and I lighted a lamp. By its light and after I had bathed my face for some time it did not look so swollen although both eyes had turned a deep purple.
Undaunted I dressed in my best Sunday clothes and prepared to set out. I had engaged to walk with Nora on that evening and it was our custom on such occasions for me to pass quietly out of the house, tapping on the door of her room on the floor below and waiting for her on the front steps.
To tell the truth I had already got well going the new dramatization of myself as a man of action but was not sure of myself in the new rôle to want to face any of the workmen in the house. Nora I thought I could handle.
As I stood in the room dressed in my best clothes I counted my money and then decided I would not be a Western ranchman after all but a man of commerce, an empire builder perhaps. I had in my possession some ninety-eight dollars which seemed to me at the moment sufficient for a start in almost any undertaking. It would support me for a few weeks while I looked about and then I would pitch in somewhere and become an empire builder. It would take time but what was time to me? I had an abundance of time. “I’ll do it,” I told myself resolutely.