THE BRAVEST BOAT
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iated lynx sprang straight up, sprang again, and again and agam
and again, as
his
mate crouched spitting and snarling below.
Sigurd and Astrid began to laugh. Then this seemed obscurely
unfair to the lynx, now solemnly washing his mate's face. The inno–
cent squirrel, for whom they felt such relief, might almost have been
showing off, almost, unlike the oblivious sparrow, have been taunting
the caged animal. The squirrel's hairbreadth escape-the thousand–
to-one-chance-that on second thought must take place every day,
seemed meaningless. But all at once it did not seem meaningless that
they had been there to see it.
"You know how I watched the paper and waited," Sigurd was
saying, stooping to relight his pipe, as they walked on.
"The Seattle
Star)"
Astrid said.
"The Seattle
Star .
..
It was the first newspaper I ever read.
Father always declared the boat had gone south- maybe to Mexico,
and I seem to remember Grandad saying no, if it didn't break up
on Tatoosh, tho tide would take it right down Juan de Fuca Strait,
maybe into Puget Sound itself. Well, I watched and waited for a
long time and finally, as kids will, I stopped looking."
"And the years went on--"
"And I grew up. Grandad was dead by then. And the old man,
you know about him. Well, he's dead too now. But I never forgot.
Twelve years! Think of it-! Why, it voyaged around longer than
we've been married."
"And we've been married seven years."
"Seven years today-"
"It seems like a miracle!"
But their words fell like spent arrows before the target of this
fact.
They were walking, as they left the forest, between two long
rows of Japanese cherry trees, next month to be an airy avenue of
celestial bloom. The cherry trees behind, the forest reappeared, to
left and right of the wide clearing, and skirting two arms of the bay.
As they approached the Pacific, down the gradual incline, on this
side remote from the harbor the wind grew more boisterous: gulls,
glaucous and raucous, wheeled and sailed overhead, yelling, and
were suddenly far out to sea.
And it was the sea that lay before them, at the end of the
