I have always called it the water-wonderland of the world, and yet, if you will observe, I must be mistaken--for we are almost alone on this side of the ship.

Is it not proof?
If I were right, the men and women in there--dancing, playing cards, chattering--would be crowding this rail.

Can you imagine humans like that?
But they can't see what I see, for I am a ridiculous old fool who remembers things.

Ah, do you catch that in the air, Miss Standish--the perfume of flowers, of forests, of green things ashore?
It is faint, but I catch it." "And so do I." She breathed in deeply of the sweet air, and turned then, so that she stood with her back to the rail, facing the flaming lights of the ship.
The mellow cadence of the music came to her, soft-stringed and sleepy; she could hear the shuffle of dancing feet.

Laughter rippled with the rhythmic thrum of the ship, voices rose and fell beyond the lighted windows, and as the old captain looked at her, there was something in her face which he could not understand.
She had come aboard strangely at Seattle, alone and almost at the last minute--defying the necessity of making reservation where half a thousand others had been turned away--and chance had brought her under his eyes.