Lucile Triumphant Part 39

"Yes; but I'm not so sure we are out of danger," Jack protested. "The captain's caution seems to show that there is still something to fear."

"You mean we might be captured?" Lucile questioned, eagerly. "That would be some adventure. You might almost imagine we were living in the Middle Ages----"

"Lucile," Evelyn was starting to remonstrate, when an excited voice whispered, huskily, "So you're here, are you?" and two figures loomed before them out of the mist. "It's I, Phil," said one of them.

"We were wondering where you and Jessie had gone," Lucile began.

"Did you know we nearly ran down a hostile cruiser? At least, that's what the captain thinks it was," he interrupted, excitedly. "If we had had lights aboard, they'd have caught us sure, take it from me."

"Which reminds me," said Phil, "that Mother sent me after you girls; she says it's too damp on deck."

Reluctantly, they turned from the s.p.a.cious deck to the close, stuffy atmosphere of the cabin.

Lucile paused at the top step of the companionway to look wistfully up into Jack's sober eyes. "I--I don't want to go down there," she said.

"And I don't want you to," he replied. Then, with an earnestness that left no doubt of his sincerity, "Lucile, I'd give a lot right now to have you safe on sh.o.r.e."

CHAPTER XXVII

HOME

The sun rose gloriously golden, dispelling the stubborn mist with an army of riotous sunbeams, that danced and s.h.i.+mmered over the waves in wild defiance of threatening wind and lowering sky. The decks and railings of the steamer, still wet from the clinging mist, shone and gleamed and sparkled in the sun like one gigantic diamond. Even the sailors sang as they worked, and one of them went so far as to attempt a sailor's hornpipe on the slippery deck, to the great amus.e.m.e.nt of his mates.

The girls had slept but little during the long night, and even when, from sheer exhaustion, they had dropped off into a troubled doze, weird, distorted fancies came to torment them into wakefulness, to stare, wide-eyed and fearful, into the inky blackness of the cabin.

So it was that, with the first streak of dawn, Lucile, who had been able to lie still no longer, softly rose, fearing to awake the others, and began to dress.

"I'm glad you are up, Lucy. I haven't slept all night," whispered Jessie, and the dark circles under her eyes bore unmistakable testimony to the truth of what she said. "I was afraid to get up for fear of waking Evelyn."

"You needn't have worried," and Evelyn, who had been lying with her face to the wall, turned over wearily. "I've been afraid to sleep--oh, girls, I've had such awful dreams!" And she covered her face with her hands to keep out the memory.

"We'll all feel better when we get on deck," Lucile prophesied, hopefully. "Don't let's talk so loud; Mother is asleep."

"No, I'm not," said a tired, fretful voice from the lower berth. "As soon as you girls get through, I'll get up."

It seemed to the girls that morning as though they would never finish dressing. Their clothes, their hairpins, even their combs and brushes, evaded them with demoniacal persistence, hiding under things, falling under the berths, rolling into corners, and otherwise misbehaving themselves, until the girls' nerves were all on edge and they were dangerously near the verge of tears.

It was Lucile's undying sense of humor that finally saved the day.

"I feel just like the Prince in the Prince and the Pauper, when the rat made a bed of him," she said. "Things can't be any worse, so it stands to reason they've got to get better."

"Let's hope so, anyway," said Evelyn, halfway between laughter and tears.

"I feel just now as though I'd like to hit somebody."

"I guess it's time we left, then," laughed Lucile, and, suiting the action to the word, she opened the door and stepped outside, the others following.

"If I look the way I feel, I must be a sight," moaned Jessie. "I hope the boys aren't on deck."

"Girls, look!" cried Lucile, pointing dramatically to the shaft of sunlight filtering through the companionway. "The sun, the blessed old sun--it's out!"

"Wonder of wonders!" cried Jessie, as they rushed up the steep steps.

"Let's go look."

The suns.h.i.+ne fell on them in a warm, life-giving flood. It brought out the l.u.s.ter in their hair; it gleamed in their eyes; it sent the warm color tingling to their faces; it made them want to sing, to dance, to shout with gladness.

"Oh to think that we were growling! To think that we dared to be down-hearted when this was waiting for us!" cried Lucile, joyfully. "We don't deserve our blessings."

"Of course you don't," said a cheerful voice behind them. "How's this for a day?"

"That's just what we've been raving about," said Jessie, as she hugged her cousin ecstatically.

"Hey, look out, young lady!" cautioned Jack, gaily. "Not everybody on board knows we're related, remember."

"Well, what they don't know won't hurt them," she retorted. "Besides, I'd hug the s.h.i.+p's cook to-day if he happened to be anywhere around."

"I'm flattered!" laughed Jack, just as Phil greeted him with a bang on the shoulder that Lucile declared could be heard in the galley.

"Say, let's play 'ring around a rosy,'" he suggested. "We've got to do something to celebrate."

"How exciting!" Jessie began, but before she could utter further protest she was jerked into the circle and was soon whirling round madly with the rest until they had to stop from exhaustion and laughter.

"It's good we stopped just when we did," said Lucile, peeping around a corner of the cabin. "I see old lady Banks in the distance. 'Pray, and may I inquire the cause of all this frivolity?'" and she imitated the old lady so perfectly that they went off into gales of laughter.

"You've sure missed your vocation, Lucile," said Jack, when they stopped to breathe.

"That's what we all tell her," agreed Evelyn. "In Burleigh----"

"Doesn't it make me homesick, just to think of it!" exclaimed Jessie.

"You haven't long to wait now," cried Lucile, springing to her feet and searching the sky-line as though she hoped to see beyond it. "A few hours more, and--the harbor!"

Great crowds thronged the deck of the steamer. It had been announced that fifteen minutes more would bring them in sight of land--their land. Eyes, old and young, were straining for that first glimpse of a country never so dear to them as now.

"There it is! It's there, it's there!" came in excited tones from different parts of the deck, the shrill tones of women and children mingling with the deeper voices of men.

"Yes, now you can see it," Mr. Payton was saying. "That tiny speck--that's America."

The word sped like magic through the crowd, breaking the tension. They all went mad with joy. Men shook hands with perfect strangers; women hugged each other, murmuring incoherently, and mothers gathered their little ones to them, weeping openly.

"h.e.l.lo, Lucy; that you? Where did you go, anyway?" said Jessie, surrept.i.tiously wiping her eyes. "I was looking for you all over."

"Oh, just around," Lucile answered, waving her hand vaguely, "congratulating everybody. Did you ever see such a wonderful time in all your life, Jessie? One little chap over there, who is crazy to see his father, asked what the noise was all about. 'Is it because I'm going to see Daddy?' he asked, and when his mother couldn't answer him, she was crying so, he put his little face against hers and begged her not to.

'It's just because I'm happy, little lad; so happy,' she said, and--and--oh, why is it that when you're happiest, you have to go and cry?" And she dashed the tears away fiercely.