Page:Tom Beauling (1901).pdf/185

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again"—that is so difficult. The first Beauling said with all his heart; the second, with all his courage. He was hull-down for the well-beloved, but he was leaving all the old homes for a new. But when the steamer had sunk the Hawaiian Islands, the old life had become a companionable ghost of a recollection. And his face was ever turned forward—north by east to the Golden Gate by which he should enter the land of his great hope.

Mist and cold closed in; the winds passed over the bergs of Bering Strait and blew upon them; the seas ran gray and high. For days the fog-horn vomited wind and sound, the hoarse, shaking "Beware!" of the ocean. They sailed by dead-reckoning, an ill-built ship, manned by Orientals and crowded to her last berth with restless humanity. They steamed slowly. On the tenth day a barren coast rose ahead, and a pilot-boat, double-reefed, shining like a yacht, came out to them, whipping across the waves and lifting like a duck. Through the drizzle they saw the gray seal on the