Edith Ballinger Price

“ Jane closed the log-book and sat looking out into the waking garden—just where Great-grandfather Mark had sat and looked and smiled a straight blunt smile as he thought of dragon-junks with peacocks' eyes at the prow and cargoes of mandarin silk and jade and jewels.
Mr. Bolliver, Jane thought, must possess some sort of Oriental magic. For who but he could have won the aunts to even a half-hearted consent that the boys should set out? The spring days passed like an extraordinary dream—all the everyday commonplace life was laced with a mystic network of preparation and excitement. ”

“ Stars came one by one out of hiding, like timid fire-flies. All down the darkly purple side of the mountain mysterious lights began to glow and to clothe the whole cliff with a luminous carpet. It was the star-dew of the flowers beginning to shine in the dusk. The air was filled then with a tremulous music that was hardly music at all, it was so faint and threadlike—the silver twinkling of the stars.
Fen sat with his head against Siddereticus's knee, and he would have sat there always; but Siddereticus rose, and he was very tall on the mountain-top. ”

“ JIM GOES ASHORE
THAT night Garth went to bed sorrowing that a white, plastered ceiling should be above him, instead of a canopy of stars. Downstairs the lighthouse door stood open to the warm night wind and soft darkness. The light of the student-lamp reached no farther than the threshold, and the doorway framed a square cut from the purple evening. Outside the water lapped and washed with that perpetual murmur which made a changeless undertone to existence at Silver Shoal. Jim closed his book and looked across a lamplit round of table at his wife and Joan.
"It's a dull book," he said. ”

“ Faintly, dawn began to break, and the first light shouldered darkness away from the horizon. Through the quiet air came the unmistakable rhythm of the surf-boat's big motor. Joan, awake instantly, tiptoed from Garth's room and flew down the stairs. She heard a cheery voice saying, "You go along in now; we'll moor your boat for you," and against the wan, gray light in the doorway saw Jim and Elspeth. She hugged them both in her relief and excitement, and drew them into the living-room. Outside, just visible in the dawn, the crew of the surf-boat were mooring the Ailouros. ”

“ But when I saw a faint wet grayness beginning to creep along the horizon beyond the Headland, I thought it was the most wonderful thing I’d ever seen in my life. The gray spread till the whole sky was the color of zinc, with the sea a little darker, and then one spikey yellow strip began to show on the sky-line. I could see Greg at last, with the jersey under his head, and the white brocade waistcoat all dark and stained at the shoulder, and his poor dear face ghastly white. And Jerry asleep, with the ruffle still pinned to his wet shirt and a big hole torn in the knee of his knickerbockers. ”

“ The dimly firelit room swam with the exquisite echo of the melody. Ken and Martin sat quiet in their corner. Felicia gazed at the dear people in the home she had made: at Ken, who had made it with her--dear old Ken, the defender of his kindred; at Kirk, for whom they had kept the joy of living alight; at the Maestro, the beautiful spirit of the place; at her mother, given back to them at last. Mrs. Sturgis looked wonderingly at her children in the firelight, but most of all at Kirk, whose face was lighted, as he leaned beside the Maestro, with a radiance she had never before seen there. ”

“ The engine-room, on a summer night, is not the coolest of places. It is not quite so hot as the fire-room, Mark reflected philosophically, but he decided that he was nearly as warm and active as the crossheads, and quite as oily. He went on deck at four o'clock, when the morning watch was called, and stood for a little while at the rail before turning in. There was not a star, not a gleam from the Delphian's wake—nothing but a blanket of moist cool darkness filled with the whisper of the ship's way. ”

“ It was Peru we were bound for,—Peru where the submarine city lay beneath uncounted fathoms waiting for us. The captain and I were the only ones Acuma, the half-breed, had taken into his confidence; all the others sailed on a blind errand, trusting to the skipper, who was a shrewd man and severe. And the brigantine wallowed around the Cape and toiled on and on up the coast, and every day Acuma grew more restless; every day he cast about the water with eyes that seemed to pierce to the very bottom of the Pacific. ”

“ Strange flowers grew on the mountain-side—pale, translucent flowers, whose centers glowed like the heart of a fire-opal. In the deep, pearly cup of each lay a little pool of dew which tasted like the most wonderful honey, but it was really melted starlight. They picked some of the flowers and made wreaths of them, and they ran and laughed. For Fen could run very fast—even up the mountain—even faster than Siddereticus. Their feet hardly touched the blue grass, and the transparent flowers sprang up again where they had passed. ”

“ Jane, curling rapturously to sleep in her cabin, whispered, "We're coming—coming—coming!" with the thrum of the engine.
Mr. Bolliver, very wide awake in his, paced up and down.
"What a fool an old man can be," he said aloud. "Ah, my poor little Jane Ingram!"
So it was Shanghai at last! The Kyoto Maru left the blue water behind, as the Delphian had done, and nosed into the wide, turbid sea at the mouth of the Yangtze River. How Jane's heart would have leapt if she had realized that those gray funnels were the Delphian's, among the clustering stacks around Woo-sung! ”

“ But though she searched rapidly, she found no cut or wound on her person which could account for it. With a little cry, "Oh, Garth!" she groped, stumbling, down the tower-stairs and back through the passage.
Feverishly, with clumsy fingers, Joan lit a lamp and ran up the house stairway, holding the light high and shading her dazzled eyes from its flame. Before she had gone halfway, Garth spoke.
"I saw her, Joan! I saw her go by! Oh, you were almost not in time, but you saved her!"
"Oh, I didn't," cried Joan, as she entered the room; "you saved her. Garth! You are hurt!" ”

“ Sister Eloise would say. "They are fighting for us now that we may come out."
But they stayed on in the cellar.
The moon had risen fair and full over the little wood and stood above it, making all the meadows about silver-gray and bright. The trees and the edges of shell-holes threw sharp, dark shadows, and of these Sister Eloise availed herself as she crept forward with her buckets. Lying prone at last behind the wall, and praying that the moon might quickly be veiled by a cloud, she caught again the gleam of helmets and heard low voices at the well. ”

“ She saw the poor frightened boat tossed rudderless in the open sea, harried and driven, wandering desolate through the outer night, a helpless mast swinging across the pitiless stars. She saw the broken hull tossed upon the rocks, battered, splintered, crushed by the Reef. She saw it floating bottom up far from land, with gulls wheeling and shrieking above it.
Joan wondered how she could face Jim, how she could bear to meet Elspeth's eyes. They would never trust her again, and she did not deserve to be trusted. ”

“ Kirk, nevertheless, stood beside the old gentleman's chair, ready with a quick, light hand to visualize his friend's features.
"My hair, if that will help you," the voice told him, "is quite white, and my eyes are usually rather blue."
"Blue," murmured Kirk, his fingers flitting down the fine lines of the old gentleman's profile; "that's cool and nice, like the sea and the wind. Your face is like the ivory thing—smooth and—and carved. I think you really must be something different and rather enchanted." ”

“ He leaned on the sill of the open casement with his dark face just below mine and began to pour out, in halting English, a tale which at first I had some trouble in understanding. The most that I made of it was that he, and he alone, knew the whereabouts of a city buried ages since under the sea and filled with treasure of an unbelievable description. But you may imagine that even the hint of such a thing was enough to set me all athrill, and I was not greatly surprised at myself when I found that I was following the queer, slinking figure down our bare little New England street. ”

“ Far off, outlined against the saffron sky, lay Venice, with its tumbled silhouette of domes and campaniles. Lights were coming out in clusters along the water-front, and glancing here and there across the shimmering lagoon.
Fen begged so hard to sit up a little later than usual that he was allowed to stay on deck until the sunset glow had faded and the sky had paled and then deepened to dusk.
"It's a much beautifuller place to look at than Egypt," he thought as he fell asleep. "Oh, if Siddereticus were only here to tell me things—he makes everything be diff'rent, somehow." ”

“ After Chun Lon's departure there was a prodigious running about, the big sweep began creaking on its pivot, the sail was hoisted and flapped in the new wind, and the boat began to move ahead.
It was an uninteresting country. Sometimes the dull marshy land would be relieved by the far-off glimpse of a pomegranate orchard drooping with scarlet fruit, or the huddled roofs of low huts. Sometimes a solitary old woman, cutting reeds, would straighten her bent back for a moment to look at the passing boat. ”

“ She was facing the blinding glare of the sun on the wall and could not see, but she heard overhead a sudden noise, and saw something hovering; then the sky rushed down on her with an annihilating crash, and the world was swirling black, torn with fire and slashed with screams.
A flying sliver of stone had gashed Sister Eloise's forehead. She sat up, wiped the blood from behind her spectacles with her apron, and then stood up dizzily. The children were huddled in the corner of the wall under the cedar, with white faces turned toward her, and horror-stricken eyes looking beyond her. ”

“ Joan blew out the lamp in her room and felt her way back to him. She sat down on the floor beside the bed and took his hand. He wriggled himself to the edge of the bed and lay very close to her, with his cheek against her arm. It was so dark that they could not see one another. The Light shot its steady silver finger straight out toward the horizon, but it seemed only to make the blackness of the room more intense. ”

“ He remembered quite well how the Maestro had said: "The sea is a tyrant. Those she claims, she never releases."
The sea's voice hissed along the side of the boat, now,—the voice of a monster ready to leap aboard,—and he couldn't see to defend himself! He flung his arms out wildly into his eternal night, and then burst suddenly into tears. He cried for some time, but it was the thought of Ken which made him stop. Ken would have said, "Isn't there enough salt water around here already, without such a mess of tears?" ”

“ ARABS AND SCARABS
FEN sighed a little as he lay back among the pillows in the deck-chair and closed his eyes. His back hurt a good deal to-day. Beyond the awning the sun beat so mercilessly on the deck of the yacht that it made his eyes ache to look at it, and there was not very much else to be seen. Unless you could sit up, you could not see the stretches of blue Nile flecked with dahabiyeh sails, nor the pale, chalky bluffs crested with solemn date-palms. ”

“ It was Acuma and I who went over the side in diving suits, for no others save the captain knew what we sought, as I have said. Down I went and down, with the weight of water crushing ever more strongly against me, till I stood upon the sea's floor. That in itself was quite wonderful enough—the green whiteness of the sand and the strange, multi-colored forest of weed and coral through which my searchlight bored a single, luminous pathway. ”

“ How could Jane know it all? Had the aunts, drowsing after their Sunday dinner, told her more than she realized? Yet the mere telling could not have made it so vivid.
Jane usually visited the attic when rain made of it a place thrumming with soft sounds and the cobwebby lunettes were even further dimmed by trickling drops. The roof and the rain were very near; the elm-tops creaked and swayed close without. Chesley Street was invisible, infinitely far below, it seemed. The gray glimpses of harbor through the small, curved panes were distant and unreal. ”

“ Joan said, "if I remember rightly, it goes one hundred and ninety thousand miles a second."
There was a silence, as immensity dawned dimly on Garth's mind. Then he said slowly:
"I'm trying to think. Do you mean that some of the stars are so far away that it takes light, going that fast, a hundred thousand years to get to us?"
"Yes," Joan whispered.
"Oh, don't!" he said. "It makes me feel all queer and empty. Let's look at our Light. That's like a nice, near star. I don't like things to be so far away as that." ”

“ We are the birds in the russet meadow, and the whispering of the orchard trees, the cheep of the crickets in the long grass, and the whole humming, throbbing voice of out-of-doors. Take our kiss upon your waiting senses.'
"That was the Third Gift. The person ran out at the door to thank the little sounds, when what should meet him but a host of the most delicious scents!
"'We are the smell of the tawny grass, and the good tang of the wood-smoke. We are the fragrance of ripening apples in the orchard, and honeysuckle over the wall. We are the clean, cool, mellowing atmosphere of September. ”