ght. It grew all the while; its voice drowned the world now, and
there was spindrift through it, picked from the back shore of the island
and flung all the way across. Objects were lost in it; ghostly things,
shore lights, fish-houses, piers, strained seaward. I heard the packet's
singing masts at the next wharf, but I saw no packet. The ponderous scow
below me became a thing of life and light, an eager bird fluttering at
its bonds and calling to the wide spaces. To my bewildered eyes it
seemed to move--it _was_ moving, shaking off the heavy hands of bondage,
joining itself with the wind. I got down on my knees of a sudden and
peered at the deck.

"_Yen Sin!_" I screamed. "_What you doin' out there?_"

I saw him dimly in the open air outside his door, fumbling and fumbling
at something. This was his great adventure, the thing that had gleamed
in his eyes and had tapped that unguessed reservoir of strength. His
voice crept back to me, harassed by the wind,

"This velly funny countly, Mista Boy. Mista Yen Sin go back China way."

His bow-line was fast to an iron ring on the wharf. I wanted to hold him
back, and I clutched at the rope with my hands as if my little strength
were something against that freed thing. The line came up to me easily,
cast off from the scow at the other end.

He was waning. His window and door and the little fan-light before the
door were all I could see now, and even that pattern blurred and became
uncertain and ghostly on the mat of the night. He was clear of the
wharves now, and the wind had him--sailing China way--so peaceful, so
dreamless, surrounded by his tell-tale cargo of Urkey's unwashed
collars.

* * *

I don't know how long it was I crouched there on the timbers, staring
out into the havoc of that black night, and listening to the hungry
clamor of the Bight. I must have been crying for the minister, over and
over, without knowing it, for when my cousin Duncan's hand fell on my
shoulder and I started up half out of my wits, he pointed a finger
toward the outer edge of the wharf.

And there they were in a little close group, Sympathy Gibbs standing
straight with the child in her arms, and Minister Malden down on his
knees. There were many people on the pier, all with their eyes to sea,
all except Sympathy Gibbs; hers were up-shore, where Mate Snow lay in
state on his own counter, all his sweet revenge behind him and gone.

I thought little Hope was asleep in the swathing shawl,