I
The next day they made Honolulu once more, with several hours to spare.
The _Skipping Goone_ was all prepared, at a little before sundown, to
sail away from the triumphant scene of Xenophon Curry’s first venture.
Everything was ship-shape. The scenic effects, which had looked so
tattered and shabby coming down through the dawn in trucks, were housed
beneath their particular hatch in the umber cavern set apart for their
stowage. The cargo was placed. The Custom House had pocketed its dues,
issued a bill of health, and handed over the requisite clearance note,
which Captain Bearman pinned to one of the leaves of the book in which he
kept the log. An almost dense crowd was on the wharf to wave God-speed.
It was a picturesque and really moving scene.
“You must _remember_,” Flora was saying, “that I always _knew_ you could
do it!” She spoke earnestly, and her fine eyes were unusually bright. She
gestured a little.
Mr. Curry felt upon him a lingering sentimentality, and asked, his voice
curiously afflicted with huskiness: “When do you suppose I’ll ever see
you again?”
“Oh, perhaps much sooner than either of us _dreams_,” she replied, as
cheerfully as she could considering the queer tug of emotion at her heart.
His look was wistful and solemn, though his wonderful smile broke through
at last.
“Good-bye,” she said warmly. “I’ll be watching for your letters so
_eagerly_, and you know I’ll be wishing you the very finest ‘success’ all
the _time_, for there won’t be a _day_ without its thought of where you
_are_ and what fortune is _doing_ for you!”
She gave him her hand, and he held it just a moment with a lingering
pressure. It was ever so much more intimate and understanding than the
farewell in San Francisco. Then he sighed and went aboard his schooner.
She smiled and nodded, her lips silently forming the word “good-bye” over
and over again, long after the ship had sped beyond earshot; and he could
see her handkerchief still hopefully fluttering when the _Skipping Goone_
had passed the first bounds of the harbour and was beginning to settle to
the heave of the outer sea.