Captain Brack was sitting in Chanler’s chair when we went in to dinner
that evening and Miss Baldwin’s place was beside him. Dr. Olson and
myself—neither Riordan nor Wilson had appeared—sat opposite.
Brack was dressed with the care of a captain of a popular
trans-Atlantic liner, and his attitude toward Miss Baldwin was solely
that of a captain solicitous for his passenger’s comfort and pleasure.
The yacht might have been the _Mauretania_, our little party the
dinner crowd of the liner’s first saloon. Brack’s personality,
polished and radiant for the time being, his flashing conversation,
filled and illumined the room. It was difficult not to forget young
Larson as one sat beneath his spell.
“An apology is necessary, Miss Baldwin, for my absence from luncheon,”
he said. “It is not etiquette to fail to welcome a passenger to her
first meal on board. It was necessary, however, that I stay on the
bridge until I was sure that the _Wanderer_ had reached her limit of
speed and that we were holding true on our course. I have stolen
thirty minutes from that duty this evening to fulfil my social
obligation as captain.”
“Then we are in a hurry, Captain Brack?” she asked.
His eyes were upon her—those eyes with their compelling power—and her
manner was subdued.
“The crew is in a desperate hurry, Miss Baldwin,” he said with one of
his flashing smiles. “Men are always in a hurry when they hear of
gold. And, really—” he bowed to her deferentially—“we have much to
thank you for, Miss Baldwin, for relieving a tense situation this
morning. I do not mean that there was the slightest danger of any
trouble. No, no! But the situation was a trifle uncomfortable when you
appeared and voted that we go hunting for gold instead of bones.” He
laughed softly. “I have wondered why you did that, Miss Baldwin; is it
presumptuous to ask?”
Miss Baldwin toyed with her spoon.
“I thought that this—going gold-hunting—was so much more alive.”
“Good!” he said earnestly. “That is why I voted for it, too. To be
alive while we are living—that is more important than to unearth old
skeletons. Isn’t that your idea, Miss Baldwin?”
“Yes,” she said with a strange smile.
“And to be alive means to live in the open, free and untrapped.”
She looked up at him, and by her expression I knew that she saw only
his eyes.
“You don’t look as if you would be contented indoors, captain,” she
said with a little laugh.
“Are you?” he said, and looked straight at her.
She smiled in puzzled fashion without replying.
“No, you are not,” he answered for her. “For you are very, very much
alive, and so must naturally have longings for the free life, which
means life outdoors. Am I not right?”
“Yes.”
“Life—we can make it a free, glorious thing, or a gray, trapped
affair, just as we choose. It is all a matter of courage. There is
still much room in the world. It is not crowded except in spots. If we
choose to remain in one of those crowded spots, or rather, if we are
afraid to leave them, we must, of necessity, become one of the gray,
trapped crowd, existing through a certain span of years without ever
knowing what it is to be truly alive. But in the great open spaces
people live—they are alive. They are natural, they are hand-in-hand
with Nature, and Nature gives them more reward for living than does
what man calls civilization.
“As one who has lived under both conditions, Miss Baldwin, I assure
you that it is only in the uncrowded spaces that man may get close
enough to the root of Life to experience the sensation of immortality.
Haven’t you felt something like that yourself?”
“Yes,” she said again, and her eyes were puzzled and full of wonder.
“You will learn,” he said, nodding his head gravely. “You are one of
those who will learn quickly the message that the open has for you.
You are free-born. You would not be here unless the call to freedom
had come to you. Isn’t that so?”
“I—I have always longed for an experience like this. How did you
know?”
“It is written upon you as plain as print; you are finding your true
sphere. Tell me truthfully: do you not at this moment feel stirred as
you never did before in your life?”
She looked up at him quickly; it seemed as if he had frightened her.
“How could you know that?” she faltered.
He smiled, leaning toward her, his eyes holding hers.
“That and many more things you will learn, Miss Baldwin,” he said
impressively. “You are beginning a new life. The new impulses you feel
are the commands of your true spirit, stricken free of the bonds of
civilization. Obey them. Remember, they are your true self; there can
be for you no realization of the full possibilities of life save along
the way they lead you. There is hidden country in all of us, and until
we explore it we don’t know what it is to live.”
He sat back in his chair, smiling, satisfied.
“And now you must excuse me; my thirty minutes are up and I have
promised Riordan thirty minutes to dine.” As he bowed and rose his
glance went across the table to me. “Now, Mr. Pitt, I will wager,
never has felt a call to be free—to explore any hidden country.”