And he had believed her. It was impossible not to believe her, and he admired her pluck in breaking all official regulations in coming aboard.
In many ways she was companionable and sweet. Yet out of his experience, he gathered the fact that she was under a tension. He knew that in some way she was making a fight, but, influenced by the wisdom of three and sixty years, he did not let her know he had guessed the truth.
He watched her closely now, without seeming to do so. She was very pretty in a quiet and unusual way. There was something irresistibly attractive about her, appealing to old memories which were painted clearly in his heart. She was girlishly slim. He had observed that her eyes were beautifully clear and gray in the sunlight, and her exquisitely smooth dark hair, neatly coiled and luxuriant crown of beauty, reminded him of puritanism in its simplicity. At times he doubted that she was twenty-three. If she had said nineteen or twenty he would have been better satisfied. She puzzled him and roused speculation in him. But it was a part of his business to see many things which others might not see—and hold his tongue.
“We are not quite alone,” she was saying. “There are others,” and she made a little gesture toward two figures farther up the rail.
“Old Donald Hardwick, of Skagway,” he said. “And the other is Alan Holt.”
“Oh, yes.”
She was facing the mountains again, her eyes shining in the light of the moon. Gently her hand touched the old captain's arm. “Listen,” she whispered.
“Another berg breaking away from Old Thunder. We are very near the shore, and there are glaciers all the way up.”
“And that other sound, like low wind—on a night so still and calm! What is it?”
“You always hear that when very close to the big mountains, Miss Standish. It is made by the water of a thousand streams and rivulets rushing down to the sea. Wherever there is melting snow in the mountains, you hear that song.”
“And this man, Alan Holt,” she reminded him. “He is a part of these things?”
“Possibly more than any other man, Miss Standish. He was born in Alaska before Nome or Fairbanks or Dawson City were thought of. It was in Eighty-four, I think. Let me see, that would make him—”
“Thirty-eight,” she said, so quickly that for a moment he was astonished.
Then he chuckled. “You are very good at figures.”
He felt an almost imperceptible tightening of her fingers on his arm.