And indeed there
was no other; nothing but low scrub-grown sandhills which flattened out
till they were almost level with the sea.
The passage through the Heads was at hand. Impulsively he went down to
fetch Mary. Threading his way through the saloon, in the middle of which
grew up one of the masts, he opened a door leading off it.
"Come on deck, my dear, and take your last look at the old place. It's
not likely you'll ever see it again."
But Mary was already encoffined in her narrow berth.
"Don't ask me even to lift my head from the pillow, Richard. Besides,
I've seen it so often before."
He lingered to make some arrangements for her comfort, fidgeted to know
where she had put his books; then mounted a locker and craned his neck
at the porthole. "Now for the Rip, wife! By God, Mary, I little thought
this time last year, that I should be crossing it to-day."
But the cabin was too dark and small to hold him. Climbing the steep
companion-way he went on deck again, and resumed his flittings to and
fro. He was no more able to be still than was the good ship under him;
he felt himself one with her, and gloried in her growing unrest. She was
now come to the narrow channel between two converging headlands, where
the waters of Hobson's Bay met those of the open sea. They boiled and
churned, in an eternal commotion, over treacherous reefs which thrust
far out below the surface and were betrayed by straight, white lines of
foam.
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