against something hard. I turned quickly. I seized at the
obstruction. It was a log from some broken boom. I threw my arm
around it for support, then I caught Joe up and pulled his hand over
it. In a second, he was all life. He clutched the log tightly, and
hung on.

Thus, he and I together,--enemies till then, but friends against our
mutual foe, the storm,--floated to safety and life.

I remember hearing voices on the waters and seeing, in a blur, Joe's
giant body being raised into a boat. But, of myself, I remember not a
thing.

Later on, they told me that, as soon as they hoisted Joe, I let go my
hold on the log, as if I had no further interest in anything, no more
use for life.

But old Andrew Clark was too quick for me. He caught me by the arm and
clung on, just as I was going down.

And it was Joe Clark,--despite all he had gone through,--who carried me
in his great strong arms from the beach to his grand-dad's cottage,
crooning over me like a mother. It was Joe who fed me with warm
liquids. It was Joe I saw when I opened my eyes once more to the
material world.

"Shake hands, old man," he said brokenly, "if mine ain't too black.
Used to think I hated you, George. I ain't hatin' anything or anybody
no more. You're the whitest man I know, Bremner, and you got me beat
six days for Sunday."

CHAPTER XXVI

"Her Knight Proved True"

I was leaning idly against a post on my front veranda, watching the sun
dancing and scintillating on the sea; listening the while to the birds
in the woods behind me as they quarrelled and fought over the choosing
of their lady-loves for the coming spring.

I was thinking of how the time had flown and of the many things that
had happened since first I set foot in Golden Crescent, not so much as
a short year ago.

Already a month had slipped by since I had wished good-bye to little
Rita,--happy, merry, little, laughing Rita,--and her great, handsome
giant of a husband, Joe; holding the end of the rope ladder for them,
from my rowing boat, as they clambered aboard the _Siwash_, at the
start of their six months' honeymoon trip of pleasure and sight-seeing.

What an itinerary that big, boyish fellow had arranged for the sweet,
little woman he had won!--Vancouver, Victoria, Seattle, San Francisco,
Los Angeles, all the big cities in the States right through to New
York, then back again over the Great Lakes, across the Western
Prairies, up over the Rockies and ho