like a pebble thrown in calm water or a sudden note on still air: it spreads in a ring-like wave, widening and widening, till, lost to sight or ear, it breaks on distant shores in vast disaster.
XV.
The steamer was already six days from Queenstown. The Grand Banks were far behind, and the southern corner of Cape Cod lay beyond the horizon to the north of west. Four months had passed since Mai Johnson had left the shelter of Hedgefence Light. She sat in a steamer-chair on deck, wrapped in a seal-skin cloak,—a changed and yet an unhappy woman. Everything the world considered good had been bestowed upon her, all the advantages of wealth, travel, beautiful apparel, personal ease and comfort, and, more strange than all, the love of a man who wished to stand to her as a father. She had been to London and Paris, and was coming home. Coming home!—to a new home which she had already begun to love,—a home filled with all that heart could wish,—a home in New York, with this kind, wise, already dear old man who insisted on being her father. Why should he not be her father? Her real father was as completely unknown as her dead mother. Her other father, at the light, had abandoned her,—had never written to her since she went away.
The voyage had been delayed by storms, and this was the first pleasant morning on deck. Many faces she had not seen before appeared from below, and there were evident signs of approaching land. The brilliant sky, the soft warm air, and the smooth water told of the American coast,—dear land just under the rim of blue where that low strip of fog lay like a bar of soft silver on the horizon. It was a perfect Indian summer morning in young November.
Just then the captain of the steamer passed leisurely along the deck, bowed politely to her, and remarked pleasantly upon the weather. This was indeed an attention, and she sat up and asked him where the ship might be. He seemed quite willing to talk to this apparently rich and certainly handsome American, and, drawing a stray stool nearer her chair, sat down by her side.
"We are crossing the Georges Banks. It is the bank that gives this green color to the water."
"The Georges. Oh, I remember. My—my brother used to go fishing on the Georges."
He seemed somewhat surprised, and she added,—
"I once lived on this coast. I suppose we shall look for a Sandy Hook pilot to-morrow."
"We have been on the lookout for one since daylight."
"I remember—I've heard my—I mean I've heard that they are very enterprising in searching for European steamers, and go as far east as Montauk, or even farther."
"Yes, miss, I have picked them up four hundred miles east of Sandy Hook. I am in hopes we shall sight one soon, before we run into fog, for otherwise we may not find one till we are close up to the Highlands."
