"Did you make that up?" inquired Amory with polite interest.
"I did if I want to," responded Little Cawthorne. "Everything's true out here—go on, tell everything you like. I'll believe you."
St. George came out of the dark and leaned on the rail without speaking. Sometimes he wondered if he were he at all, and he liked the doubt. He felt pleasantly as if he had been cut loose from all old conditions and were sailing between skies to some unknown planet. This was not only because of the strange waters rushing underfoot but because of the flowering and singing of something within him that made the world into which he was sailing an alien place, heavenly desirable. A week ago that day The Aloha had weighed anchor, and these seven days, in fairly fortunate weather, her white nose had been cleaving seas to traverse which had so long been her owner's dream; and yet her owner, in pleasant apostasy, had turned his back upon the whole matter of what he had been used to dream, and now ungratefully spent his time in trying to count the hours to his journey's end.
Somewhere out yonder, he reflected, as he leaned on the rail, this southern moonlight was flooding whatever scene she looked on; the lapping of the same sea was in her ears; and his future and hers might be dependent upon those two perplexed tan-coloured greyhounds below. By which one would have said that matters had been going briskly forward with St. George since the morning that he had breakfasted with Olivia Holland.
Exactly when the end of the journey would be was not evident either to him or to the two strange creatures who proposed to be his guides. Or rather to Jarvo, who was still the spokesman; lean little Akko, although his intelligence was unrivaled, being content with monosyllables for stepping-stones while the stream of Jarvo's soft speech flowed about him. Barnay, the captain, frankly distrusted them both, and confided to St. George that "them two little jool-eyed scuts was limbs av the old gint himself, and they reminded him, Barnay, of a pair of haythen naygurs," than which he could say no more. But then, Barnay's wholesale skepticism was his only recreation, save talking about his pretty daughter "of school age," and he liked to stand tucking his beard inside his collar and indulging in both. In truth, Barnay, who knew the waters of the Atlantic fairly well, was sorely tried to take orders from the two little brown strangers who, he averred, consulted a "haythen apparaytus" which they would cheerfully let him see but of which he could "make no more than av the spach av a fish," and then directed him to take courses which lay far outside the beaten tracks of the high seas.
St. George, who had had several talks with them, was puzzled and doubtful, and more than once confided to himself that the lives of the passenger list of The Aloha might be worth no more than coral headstones at the bottom of the South Atlantic. But he always consoled himself with the cheering reflection that he had had to come—there was no other way half so good. So The Aloha continued to plow her way as serenely as if she were heading toward the white cliffs of Dover and trim villas and a custom-house. And the sea lay a blue, uninhabited glory save as land that Barnay knew about marked low blades of smoke on the horizon and slipped back into blue sheaths.
This was the evening of the seventh day, and that noon Jarvo had looked despondent, and Barnay had sworn strange oaths, and St. George had been disquieted. He stood up now, going vaguely down into his coat pockets for his pipe, his erect figure thrown in relief against the hurrying purple. St. George was good to look at, and Amory, with the moonlight catching the glass of his pince-nez, smoked and watched him, shrewdly pondering upon exactly how much anxiety for the success of the enterprise was occupying the breast of his friend and how much of an emotion a good bit stronger. Amory himself was not in love, but there existed between him and all who were a special kinship, like that between a lover of music and a musician.
Little Cawthorne rose and shuffled his feet lazily across deck.
"Where is that island, anyway?" he wanted to know, gazing meditatively out to sea.
St. George turned as if the interruption was grateful.