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Business called Weston to Winnipeg a few days after his interview with Ida, and, as it happened, he met Stirling at the head of the companionway when the big lake steamer steamed out into Georgian Bay. Neither of them had any other acquaintance on board, and they sat together in the shade of a deckhouse as the steamer ploughed her way smoothly across Lake Huron a few hours later.
But, realizing it was expected of him, he began praising the boat, until the unsuspecting Hilliard believed him as enthusiastic as himself. "Yes, she's all of that," he agreed. "Come aboard and see the cabin." They descended a flight of steps let into the front of the wharf, wet, slippery, ooze-covered steps left bare by the receding tide, and stepping over the side entered the tiny deckhouse.
The chief officer judged his second beautifully, and the line fell clean across the vessel and all but amidships. A figure started up from the lee of the deckhouse, and springing into the main shrouds, grasped it and made it fast. The beach being too low for them to work the cradle clear above the breakers, the coast-guardsmen carried the shore end of the line up the shelving cliff and fixed it.
The Barang had a deckhouse companion, that is, a square house built over and around the head of the companionway stairs, forming a convenient chart room for the officers or a snug smoking lounge for possible passengers. By the open door of this house Barry stood for a few moments, gazing intently at the picture he had snatched from Leyden, and which had remained in his pocket after the encounter.
A seaman wiping down the paintwork on the deckhouse saluted. Gissing returned these gestures punctiliously, and began to pace the bridge from side to side. He soon grew accustomed to the varying slant of the deck, and felt that his footing showed a nautical assurance. Now for the first time he enjoyed an untrammelled horizon on all sides.
He continued: "What I suffered on that boat I should be ashamed to tell you." She felt he spoke the truth. "Oh, I forgive you I have reflected alone a great deal. I passed many nights and days on the divan of the deckhouse, turning always the same ideas in my mind. For six months I have thought more than I ever did in my life. Do not laugh. There is nothing like suffering to enlarge the mind.
The rainy winter night was not so inviting to most of the passengers as the comfortable rooms below. Kenyon, however, and one or two others came up, and sat on the steamer chairs that were tied to the brass rod which ran along the deckhouse wall.
We were on the lee side underneath the shelter of the deckhouse clinging to the shrouds, now up to our knees in water as the wave came on, now left high and dry when it went back. The blue light was still burning, but the ship was beached a little to the right of it, and the dim group of fishermen had moved up along the beach till they were opposite us.
The order was obeyed, but no more arrows came on board, while from behind the deckhouse Brace stood with Briscoe watching the upturned canoe growing smaller and smaller in the distance, Brace expecting to see some daring swimmer appear from the shore, trying to get on board.
The face of the man was indistinct, a mere outline, but the swift impulse to strike at it was irresistible, and I let him have the blow a straight-arm jab to the jaw. My clinched knuckles crunched against the flesh, and he reeled back, kept from falling only by the support of the deckhouse.
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