Even as he spoke and wondered how and why his dream should be dominant
it changed. The rectangular windows of the old wooden coach grew
indistinct. The car roof seemed to grow dimmer, finally to vanish
altogether.
Against the starlit black of space were outlined the spars and ropes
and masts and sails of a full-rigged sailing ship. They stood on its
gently rocking poop and forward and below Justin could make out the
waist and, beyond, the rise of the forecastle and the sharp lift of the
sprit from the bow.
He looked at Deborah, saw how the breeze caught her hair and whipped
it like some magnificent pennant of brownish gold and saw that she was
speaking to him, crying, "This is _my_ dream, Darling Charles--and I
like it far better than thine."
"So do I," he replied, over-whelmed utterly by the miracle.
They floated slowly down until the sky once more was blue above them,
first a dark unlikely blue, then lighter and increasingly familiar in
hue. Once more Justin saw the earth flatten out and the first white
woolly clouds appear.
But from then on all trace of similarity with his own dream ended.
They were entering Boston Harbor and in his excitement Justin held
Deborah's hand so tightly that she cried out and he relaxed his grip
with a murmur of apology.
"Castle William!" he murmured as they swept past the chief harbor
fortification, from which an English ensign flapped gaily in the breeze.
Where the South End now rests was only water and, beyond it, the
highlands of Dorchester and Nantasket rose in wooded splendor, innocent
of the grime of industrial tenements and factories. They rounded a
headland and, slowly, Boston itself swam into view.
Justin let out a cry of sheer delight. There was the old city--little
more than a large town by twentieth-century standards with its fewer
than twenty thousand inhabitants--its numerous spires and church
steeples topping its hills, its houses and buildings crowding the
wharves to which were moored fishermen, coasters and ocean ships, their
masts making an intricate and fantastic pattern against the sky.
Then darkness whirled briefly about them and they seemed to be plucked
from the deck of the white ship by a sort of whirlpool. Justin cried
out, involuntarily, again felt the firm softness of Deborah's hand
pressed against his lips. He was lying on the edge of a bed whose
bottom seemed to be spilling over the side.
"Deborah?" sounded a shrill matronly voice from somewhere beyond a
door, closed and invisible in the darkness. "Deborah, are ye all right?
I thought I heard ye cry out."
"Just a dream, mama. I'm quite all right," the girl called back. There
was a nervous silent wait, the sound of scuffling footsteps growing
fainter, then the slam of another door.
"I thought surely ye'r outcry would have them all about us," said the
girl reprovingly. "Ye'r really here with me after all and methinks
ye'll be a great problem, if not my ruination forever."