[CHAPTER XIII.]
HOMEWARD BOUND.
The voyage southward proceeded without special incident. “Glaciers” were gradually left behind, but “gulfs” and bays, channels and narrow passages were still a part of the programme. The day following the reading of the “Decade” was Sunday. Mr. Selborne at the request of many of the passengers, preached in the cabin, the Percivals organizing a choir which led the singing with their clear young voices.
On Monday the Queen reached Nanaimo, a city and coaling-station for ships, on the east shore of Vancouver’s Island. Tom and Fred hired a team and drove half a dozen miles inland to a trout-brook of which they had heard. Tom could not walk about much, but he enjoyed the ride immensely, and when they reached the brook he limped along the bank to a shady spot, from which he shouted various comments, disparaging and otherwise, on his companion’s methods of angling and rather limited success. They returned tired but happy, with a dozen silvery little fish as trophies. In the late afternoon Randolph and Pet headed a party to explore the city, which they found a hot and dusty one, but, in its upper portions, abounding in wonderfully bright flowers.
At one garden they stopped and bought a great ball of nasturtiums. It was nearly twilight, and as the travelers leaned against the fence, idly watching the owner of the garden as he gathered the nosegay, they saw whole flocks of evening primroses opening their wings like yellow butterflies, one by one.
This gardener, it seemed, was a blacksmith, employed by day in a coal mine which ran out half a mile under the sea. His business, he said, was to keep the mules shod.
The shaft of this great mine came up in the outskirts of the town, and the Percivals, earlier in the day, had seen the huge buckets come rushing up from the bowels of the earth, six hundred and forty feet below, laden with coal and streaming with water.
The evening was memorable for a row in the harbor to an Indian burying-ground, where strange and hideously carved figures kept watch over the neglected graves.
Until a late hour, after their return from this boating excursion, the party remained on deck, talking over the events of the day.