ds.

But the Gods of destiny act in whimsical ways. Doubtless the voyage
would have finished without the betterment of our acquaintance;
doubtless our paths would have parted, nevermore to cross; doubtless our
lives would have been lived out to their fulness and this story never
have been told--had it not been for the luckless fatality of the Box of
Grapes.

CHAPTER III

Puget Sound was behind us and we had entered on that great sea that
stretched northward to the Arctic barrens. Misty and wet was the wind,
and cold with the kiss of many icebergs. Under a grey sky, glooming to
purple, the gelid water writhed nakedly. Spectral islands elbowed each
other, to peer at us as we flitted past. Still more wraithlike the
mainland, fringed to the sea foam with saturnine pine, faded away into
fastnesses of impregnable desolation. There was a sense of deathlike
passivity in the land, of overwhelming vastitude, of unconquerable
loneliness. It was as if I had felt for the first time the Spirit of the
Wild; the Wild where God broods amid His silence; the Wild, His infinite
solace and His sanctuary.

As we forged through the vague sea lanes, we were like a glittering
trinket on the bosom of the night. Our mad merriment scarce ever abated.
We were a blare of revelry and a blaze of light. Excitement mounted to
fever heat. In the midst of it the women with the enamelled cheeks
reaped a bountiful harvest. I marvel now that, with all the besotted
recklessness of those that were our pilots, we met with no serious
mishap.

"Don't mind you much of a Sunday-school picnic, does it?" commented the
Prodigal. "It's fierce the way the girls are prying some of these crazy
jays loose from their wads. They're all plumb batty. I'm tired trying to
wise them up. 'Go and chase yourself,' they say; 'we're all right. Don't
matter if we do loosen up a bit now, there's all kinds of easy money
waiting for us up there.' Then they talk of what they're going to do
when they've got the dough. One gazebo wants to buy a castle in the old
country; another wants a racing stable; another a steam yacht. Oh,
they're a hot bunch of sports. They're all planning to have a purple
time in the sweet by-and-bye. I don't hear any of them speak of endowing
a home for decrepit wash-ladies or pensioning off their aged
grandmothers. They make me sick. There's a cold juicy awakening coming."

He was right. In their visionary leaps to affluence they soared to giddy
heig