White Fire Part 11

"Through Time into Eternity."

She looked at him quietly and questioningly, but his gaze was fixed absorbedly on the opposite sh.o.r.e. It seemed almost as if he had forgotten her for the moment. She was content to watch him and to listen to him--

"And as the wide blue sky above, Encircling us where'er we move."

There it was above them. The chariots had pa.s.sed away. The sky was unflecked blue--

"So is His all-enfolding Love."

Then came a longer pause, and she thought he had ended, but she would not speak. And presently he began again--

"For these, Thy gifts, we thank Thee, Lord!

Hills, sea, and sky, take up the word, And thank Thee!--thank Thee!--thank Thee, Lord."

He sat still, gazing out intently at the hills and the sea and the sky, and sat so long without a word that at last she spoke.

"Whose is that, Ken? Surely he must have sat just here, and seen just that."

He turned slowly to her, as though he found it difficult to leave those wonders beyond.

"I really do not know, dear.... They seemed to come of their own accord from somewhere. But whether I recalled them from somewhere else, or whether they came hot from the anvil, I do not know. I do not think I ever made a line of poetry in my life. There has been always so much else to be done."

"I think you must have made them," she said.

Then, in turn, she had her own amusing little monologue. For she began suddenly telling off the lochs and hills, just as he had named them to her that other day--"Loch Goil, Loch Long, Ben More, Ben Lomond, The Cobbler, Ben Ihme, Holy Loch!"

"We shall often think of them when the prospect is a very different one," he said quietly. "You never regret all that you are going to leave behind you, Jean?"

"Never for one moment, dear. I am taking with me, and going to, so very much more than I leave behind, that my heart is full of gladness,"

she said. "There is not room for the smallest shadow of a shadow of regret."

And they joined hands again and went on along the windings of the path, in and out of the curves and dimples of the mountain's breast, till the bold peaks of Arran rose purple in the distance, and they came to the Sheils Farm.

Blair's kinsfolk had long since left the place. He just took a look round the familiar byres and stables, and poked his head into a room whence a fresh-complexioned dairy-maid, in short blue skirts and bare feet, was busily chasing hens. He came out with a reminiscent smile on his face, and they turned down the hill towards Inverkip. He led her by the short cuts his boyish feet had known so well; past the old burying-ground, where the body-s.n.a.t.c.hers plied their gruesome trade and the village folk sat up night after night to protect their dead; past the gates of Ardgowan to the sea. And so along the sh.o.r.e road, with the waves splashing up among the boulders on one side, and the dark policies on the other, and the great trees meeting overhead; past the st.u.r.dy white pillar of the Cloch into Ashton, and so at last home. A honeymoon trip which neither of them ever forgot as long as they lived.

"Well, you two," said Aunt Jannet, when they came in. "We began to think you'd given us the slip and gone across the border without saying goodbye."

"We've been a long round," said Blair, "about----"

"About twelve years," said Jean.

"Then you must be starving. We expected you'd come home ravenous, and provided accordingly."

"We've been living on the fat of the land," laughed Jean; but they both fell to all the same, and proved beyond doubt that high thought and good living were by no means incompatible.

CHAPTER VIII

GOING STRONG

That same evening a burly, middle-aged man came to the house and requested audience of Mr. Blair.

He bore the unmistakable hall-mark, and Kenneth liked the looks of him and the ring of his voice.

The two men eyed one another closely as they shook hands.

"Mr. Duncan told me you were wanting a captain for your schooner, Mr.

Blair. I only heard it half an hour ago, and I've come straight."

Blair nodded. "What are your qualifications? It is not everybody's job, you know."

"I know all about it, sir. And I think I'm the man for it. My name is Cathie--John Cathie. I sailed my own ship as master for over fifteen years. Quitted the sea three years ago because I'd made enough to live on and the wife wanted me to stop ash.o.r.e. She died six months ago.

I've neither chick nor child, and I want back to the water. When you've spent thirty-five years with live water under your feet, the land comes strange to you!"

"Ever been in the South Seas?"

"Spent ten years in the Island trade, sir. Know 'em like a book, from the Carolines to the Paumotus; and if you can find a brown man in the whole stretch that has a word against John Cathie I'll--well, you can name your own forfeit."

"And the white men?"

"Ah--there! Most of 'em all right. Some I'd like to see strung higher than Haman. But that kind's mostly yellow, though some are dirty white."

"Know the Dark Islands?"

"At a distance. I never landed there. I was only a trader then."

"And these men you'd like to see strung up like Haman, only more so, Captain Cathie?"

"You know them as well as I do, sir. Kidnappers, black-birders, treacherous devils, sc.u.m of the earth. They don't have the times they used to have, but they're not wholly cleared out yet in the outlying groups. I'll be glad to give what time's left me to helping clear them."

"You're up to steam?"

"Had five years of it."

"Any hand with a Long Tom?"

"Was gunner's mate for three years on the _Blenheim_ before I got married, and we always carried guns in the Islands," and the bold blue eyes snapped with a touch of puzzlement. "But--I thought it was a missionary cruise you were bound on, Mr. Blair?"

"I'm a new kind of missionary, Captain Cathie. The faithful shepherd protects his flock. If the wolves try to steal his lambs, the wolves must take the consequences."

"By G.o.d, sir, I'm your man!" and the burly one jumped up with a flame in his face, because he could not sit still under the hopes that were in him.

"I'm inclined to think you may be," said Blair. "You will understand, Captain Cathie, that the master of our ship will be one of the most important links in the chain. If you will look in about this time to-morrow, you shall hear what we have decided."

"Right, sir! I'll be here." He turned back when he had reached the door. "If you should find some better man for captain, put me down for chief mate, Mr. Blair; and if I'm not good enough for that, I'll go before the mast sooner than be left out."