It was again the luncheon hour. It was also the hour at which the _Empress_ was scheduled to sail. Nancy was again on the Terrace. But now she was standing on the edge of the promenade--alone. She was gazing down at the grey waters of the great river, searching with eager eyes, and listening for the "hoot" of the vessel's siren. This was the last departure the _Empress_ would make from Quebec for the season. By the time she returned across the ocean the ice would deny her approach, and she would make port farther seawards.

Nancy had come there in her leisure just out of simple interest, she told herself. The man was nothing to her. Oh, no. She felt a certain regret that they were at war. She felt a certain pity that it was necessary that so brave a man's hopes must be crushed and all his plans broken, but that was all. She told herself these things very deliberately.

And so she had hurried over her mid-day meal, lest she should miss the sight of the _Empress_ steaming out, with Bull Sternford aboard.

The day was cold and grey. There was snow in the heavy clouds, and the north wind was bitter. But it mattered nothing. Waiting there the girl's feet in their overshoes grew cold. Her hands were cold. Even her slim, graceful body under its outer covering of fur was none too warm. But her whole interest was absorbed and she remained so till the appointed time.

Oh, yes. It was simply interest in the departure of the vessel that held her. Just the same, as it was simply interest that stirred her heart and set it a-flutter, as the sound of the ship's siren came up to her from below. And surely it was only a 'G.o.d-speed' to the departing vessel that was conveyed in the fluttering handkerchief she held out and waved, as the graceful giant pa.s.sed out into the distant mid-channel.

CHAPTER XVI

ON BOARD THE _Empress_

It was the second day out and the pa.s.sengers on the _Empress_ had already settled down to their week's trip.

The sea was calm, with just that pleasant, lazy swell which the Atlantic never really loses. The decks were thronged with a happy company of men and women determined not to lose one single moment of the bodily ease which the clemency of the weather vouchsafed to them.

Bull Sternford was amongst them. Engulfed in a heavy fur overcoat, he stood lounging against the lee rail of the wide promenade deck, contemplating the oily swell of the waters. His great stature was somewhat magnified by his voluminous coat, with its deep, upturned storm-collar. There was that about him to attract considerable attention. But he remained unconscious of it, and his aloofness was by no means studied.

Deep emotion was stirring. A man of iron nerve and purpose, a man of cool deliberation under the harshest circ.u.mstances, just now Bull was afflicted like the veriest weakling with alternating hope and doubt, and something approaching indecision. The youth in him was plunged in that agony of desire which maddens with delight and drives headlong to despair. His whole horizon of life had changed. Old scenes, old dreams, had been suddenly blotted out. And in their place was the wonderful vision of a girl with vivid hair and gentle eyes. Nancy--Nancy McDonald.

The name was always with him now, unspoken, unwhispered even; but occupying every waking thought.

It was a time of reckless resolve, of hot-headed planning. He knew in his sober moments how almost impossible was the position. But these were not sober moments. He told himself, in his headlong way, that if Nancy was chained in the heart of h.e.l.l he would seek her out, and claim her.

She should be his even though every infernal power were arrayed against him. His eyes were alight with a fierce smile, as he contemplated the grey waters. It was a smile of conscious strength, of reckless purpose.

Well, he was ready. He was--

"Guess we'll git this sort of stuff all the way."

Bull started and swung around. A fur-coated man with a dark close-cropped beard was leaning over the rail beside him. He was expensively clad. His astrachan collar was turned up about his neck to shut out something of the biting winter air; and a cap of similar fur was pressed low down over his dark head. Bull noted the man's appearance, and his reply was promptly forthcoming.

"Maybe," he admitted without interest.

"Sure we will. It's always that way with the _Empress's_ last trip of the season from Quebec. I most generally make it for that reason. Your first trip?"

"No."

"It's my nineteenth. You see," the stranger went on, "I can't spare summer time. I'm too full gettin' orders out. I'm in the lumber business. It's only with the freeze up I can quit my mills. Have a cigar?"

Bull had no alternative. The man was there to talk, and his desire to do so was frankly displayed.

"I won't smoke, thanks," Bull replied without offense. "It's too near dinner."

"Dinner? There's a ha'f hour to the dressing bugle." The stranger returned the elaborate case stuffed full of large, expensive cigars to his pocket, and drew out a gold cigarette case instead. "Still I don't blame you a thing. Cigars? Me for a cigarette all the time. I don't guess any feller ever heard tell of tobacco, till he'd inhaled a good, plain Virginia Cigarette."

Bull looked on while the man wasted half-a-dozen matches lighting his beloved cigarette. He was not without interest. There was a slightly Jewish caste about his face which was frankly smiling, and lit with shrewd, twinkling dark eyes. He conveyed, too, somewhat blatantly, an atmosphere of abounding prosperity.

Bull laughed as the cigarette was finally lighted.

"That's better," he said. "Now--you can inhale."

"Sure I can." The man's smile was full of amiability. "Inhale anything.

Say, up in the camps I've inhaled tea-leaves rolled in cracker paper before now. Ever hit a lumber camp?"

"Yes."

"But not out West? British Columbia?"

"No. Only Quebec."

The stranger shook his head disparagingly.

"Quebec! Psha! Quebec ain't a thing. It ain't a circ.u.mstance," he said complacently. "No, sir. The West. That's the place for lumbering. B.C.

West of the Rockies. Man, it's the world's greatest proposition. The place you can spend a lifetime cutting ninety foot baulks, and lose track of where you cut. Quebec's mostly small stuff," he went on contemptuously, "pulp-wood an' that." He shook his head. "It's no place for capital. And, anyway, the Frenchies have got the whole darn place taped out. Oh, they're wise--the Frenchies. If a feller's lookin' to get ahead of 'em he needs to stake out the Arctic, where you'd freeze the ears of a bra.s.s image. The Frenchies got it all. The only big stuff lies on Labrador, anyway. I know. I prospected. No, it's me for the big hills, West. The big hills and the big waterways that 'ud leave Quebec rivers looking like a leak in a bone dry bar'l. My name's Aylin P.

Cantor, Vancouver, B.C. Maybe you know the name?"

Bull shook his head.

"I'm not--"

"Oh, it don't matter," interjected Mr. Cantor. "You see, the West's one h.e.l.l of a long way--west. I just didn't get your--"

"Oh, my name's Sternford."

Mr. Cantor's face beamed.

"Why I'm glad to know you, Mr. Sternford," he exclaimed. Then a quick, enquiring upward glance of his shrewd eyes suggested recollection. "But say--you ain't Sternford of Labrador? The groundwood outfit up at--up at--"

"Sachigo?"

"That's it, sure. Guess I'd lost the name a moment."

Bull nodded amusedly.

"Yes. That's where I hail from. And, as you say, there's big stuff up there, too."

"Big? Why I'd say. Well, now! That's fine! I've heard tell big yarns of Labrador. It's just great meeting--"

The man broke off at the sound of the first blast of the dressing bugle.

"Why, it's later than I guessed," he said. "Anyway, you'll take a c.o.c.ktail with me? This vessel's good and wet, thanks be to Providence, and the high seas being peopled with fish instead of cranks. I hadn't a notion I was goin' to run into a real lumberman on this trip. It's done me a power of good."

Aylin P. Cantor was a diverting creature for all his appearance of ostentatious prosperity. Good fortune had undoubtedly been his, and his whole being seemed to have become absorbed in the trade which had so generously treated him. Before the c.o.c.ktail was consumed Bull had listened to a long story of British Columbia, and forests of incomparable extent. He had also learned that a country estate, miles in extent, outside the city of Vancouver, and the luxuries a.s.sociated with the multi-millionaire had fallen to the lot of Aylin P. Cantor. But somehow there was no offence in it all. The man was just a bubbling fount of enthusiasm and delight that this was so. He simply had to talk of it.