XI.

That particular day in the last week in April was sombre and somewhat

chilly, but there was little wind. The water of the harbour lay smooth

as a sheet of tightly stretched gray silk. Overhead the sea-fog drifted

gradually landward, descending, as it drifted, till the outlines of the

City grew blurred and indistinct, resolving to a dim, vast mass, rugged

with high-shouldered office buildings and bulging, balloon-like domes,

confused and mysterious under the cloak of the fog. In the nearer

foreground, along the lines of the wharves and docks, a wilderness of

masts and spars of a tone just darker than the gray of the mist stood

away from the blur of the background with the distinctness and delicacy

of frost-work.

But amid all this grayness of sky and water and fog one distinguished

certain black and shifting masses. They outlined every wharf, they

banked every dock, every quay. Every small and inconsequent jetty had

its fringe of black. Even the roofs of the buildings along the

water-front were crested with the same dull-coloured mass.

It was the People, the crowd, rank upon rank, close-packed, expectant,

thronging there upon the City's edge, swelling in size with the lapse of

every minute, vast, conglomerate, restless, and throwing off into the

stillness of the quiet gray air a prolonged, indefinite murmur, a

monotonous minor note.

The surface of the bay was dotted over with all manner of craft black

with people. Rowboats, perilously overcrowded, were everywhere.

Ferryboats and excursion steamers, chartered for that day, heeled over

almost to the water's edge with the unsteady weight of their passengers.

Tugboats passed up and down similarly crowded and displaying the flags

of various journals and news organisations--the News, the Press, the

Times, and the Associated Press. Private yachts, trim and very graceful

and gleaming with brass and varnish, slipped by with scarcely a ripple

to mark their progress, while full in the centre of the bay, gigantic,

solid, formidable, her grim, silent guns thrusting their snouts from her

turrets, a great, white battleship rode motionless to her anchor.

An hour passed; noon came. At long intervals a faint seaward breeze

compressed the fog, and high, sad-coloured clouds and a fine and

penetrating rain came drizzling down. The crowds along the wharves grew

denser and blacker. The numbers of yachts, boats, and steamers

increased; even the yards and masts of the merchant-ships were dotted

over with watchers.

Then, at length, from far up the bay there came a faint, a barely

perceptible, droning sound, the sound of distant shouting. Instantly the

crowds were alert, and a quick, surging movement rippled from end to end

of the throng along the water-front. Its subdued murmur rose in pitch

upon the second. Like a flock of agitated gulls, the boats in the

harbour stirred nimbly from place to place; a belated newspaper tug tore

by, headed for the upper bay, smoking fiercely, the water boiling from

her bows. From the battleship came the tap of a drum. The excursion

steamers and chartered ferryboats moved to points of vantage and took

position, occasionally feeling the water with their paddles.

The distant, droning sound drew gradually nearer, swelling in volume,

and by degrees splitting into innumerable component parts. One began to

distinguish the various notes that contributed to its volume--a sharp,

quick volley of inarticulate shouts or a cadenced cheer or a hoarse

salvo of steam whistles. Bells began to ring in different quarters of

the City.

Then all at once the advancing wave of sound swept down like the rush of

a great storm. A roar as of the unchained wind leaped upward from those

banked and crowding masses. It swelled louder and louder, deafening,

inarticulate. A vast bellow of exultation split the gray, low-hanging

heavens. Erect plumes of steam shot upward from the ferry and excursion

boats, but the noise of their whistles was lost and drowned in the

reverberation of that mighty and prolonged clamour. But suddenly the

indeterminate thunder was pierced and dominated by a sharp and

deep-toned report, and a jet of white smoke shot out from the flanks of

the battleship. Her guns had spoken. Instantly and from another quarter

of her hull came another jet of white smoke, stabbed through with its

thin, yellow flash, and another abrupt clap of thunder shook the windows

of the City.

The boats that all the morning had been moving toward the upper bay were

returning. They came slowly, a veritable fleet, steaming down the bay,

headed for the open sea, beyond the entrance of the harbour, each

crowded and careening to the very gunwales, each whistling with might

and main.

And in their midst--the storm-centre round which this tempest of

acclamation surged, the object on which so many eyes were focussed, the

hope of an entire nation--one ship.

She was small and seemingly pitifully inadequate for the great adventure

on which she was bound; her lines were short and ungraceful. From her

clumsy iron-shod bow to her high, round stern, from her bulging sides to

the summit of her short, powerful masts there was scant beauty in her.

She was broad, blunt, evidently slow in her movements, and in the smooth

waters of the bay seemed out of her element. But, for all that, she

imparted an impression of compactness, the compactness of things dwarfed

and stunted. Vast, indeed, would be the force that would crush those

bulging flanks, so cunningly built, moreover, that the ship must slip

and rise to any too great lateral pressure. Far above her waist rose her

smokestack. Overhead upon the mainmast was affixed the crow's nest.

Whaleboats and cutters swung from her davits, while all her decks were

cumbered with barrels, with crates, with boxes and strangely shaped

bales and cases.

She drew nearer, continuing that slow, proud progress down the bay,

honoured as no visiting sovereign had ever been. The great white

man-of-war dressed ship as she passed, and the ensign at her

fighting-top dipped and rose again. At once there was a movement aboard

the little outbound ship; one of her crew ran aft and hauled sharply at

the halyards, and then at her peak there was broken out not the

brilliant tri-coloured banner, gay and brave and clean, but a little

length of bunting, tattered and soiled, a faded breadth of stars and

bars, a veritable battle-flag, eloquent of strenuous endeavour, of

fighting without quarter, and of hardship borne without flinching and

without complaining.

The ship with her crowding escorts held onward. By degrees the City was

passed; the bay narrowed oceanwards little by little. The throng of

people, the boom of cannon, and the noise of shouting dropped astern.

One by one the boats of the escorting squadron halted, drew off, and,

turning with a parting blast of their whistles, headed back to the City.

Only the larger, heavier steamers and the sea-going tugs still kept on

their way. On either shore of the bay the houses began to dwindle,

giving place to open fields, brown and sear under the scudding sea-fog,

for now a wind was building up from out the east, and the surface of the

bay had begun to ruffle.

Half a mile farther on the slow, huge, groundswells began to come in; a

lighthouse was passed. Full in view, on ahead, stretched the open, empty

waste of ocean. Another steamer turned back, then another, then another,

then the last of the newspaper tugs. The fleet, reduced now to half a

dozen craft, ploughed on through and over the groundswells, the ship

they were escorting leading the way, her ragged little ensign straining

stiff in the ocean wind. At the entrance of the bay, where the enclosing

shores drew together and trailed off to surf-beaten sand-spits, three

more of the escort halted, and, unwilling to face the tumbling expanse

of the ocean, bleak and gray, turned homeward. Then just beyond the bar

two more of the remaining boats fell off and headed Cityward; a third

immediately did likewise. The outbound ship was left with only one

companion.

But that one, a sturdy little sea-going tug, held close, close to the

flank of the departing vessel, keeping even pace with her and lying

alongside as nearly as she dared, for the fog had begun to thicken, and

distant objects were shut from sight by occasional drifting patches.

On board the tug there was but one passenger--a woman. She stood upon

the forward deck, holding to a stanchion with one strong, white hand,

the strands of her bronze-red hair whipping across her face, the salt

spray damp upon her cheeks. She was dressed in a long, brown ulster, its

cape flying from her shoulders as the wind lifted it. Small as was the

outgoing ship, the tug was still smaller, and its single passenger had

to raise her eyes above her to see the figure of a man upon the bridge

of the ship, a tall, heavily built figure, buttoned from heel to chin in

a greatcoat, who stood there gripping the rail of the bridge with one

hand, and from time to time giving an order to his sailing-master, who

stood in the centre of the bridge before the compass and electric

indicator.

Between the man upon the bridge and the woman on the forward deck of the

tug there was from time to time a little conversation. They called to

one another above the throbbing of the engines and the wash of the sea

alongside, and in the sound of their voices there was a note of

attempted cheerfulness. Practically they were alone, with the exception

of the sailing-master on the bridge. The crew of the ship were nowhere

in sight. On the tug no one but the woman was to be seen. All around

them stretched the fog-ridden sea.

Then at last, in answer to a question from the man on the bridge, the

woman said:

"Yes--I think I had better."

An order was given. The tug's bell rang in her engine-room, and the

engine slowed and stopped. For some time the tug continued her headway,

ranging alongside the ship as before. Then she began to fall behind, at

first slowly, then with increasing swiftness. The outbound ship

continued on her way, and between the two the water widened and widened.

But the fog was thick; in another moment the two would be shut out from

each other's sight. The moment of separation was come.

Then Lloyd, standing alone on that heaving deck, drew herself up to her

full height, her head a little back, her blue eyes all alight, a smile

upon her lips. She spoke no word. She made no gesture, but stood there,

the smile yet upon her lips, erect, firm, motionless; looking steadily,

calmly, proudly into Bennett's eyes as his ship carried him farther and

farther away.

Suddenly the fog shut down. The two vessels were shut from each other's

sight.

As Bennett stood leaning upon the rail of the bridge behind him, his

hands deep in the pockets of his greatcoat, his eyes fixed on the

visible strip of water just ahead of his ship's prow, the

sailing-master, Adler, approached and saluted.

"Beg pardon, sir," he said, "we're just clear of the last buoy; what's

our course now, sir?"

Bennett glanced at the chart that Adler held and then at the compass

affixed to the rail of the bridge close at hand. Quietly he answered:

"Due north."