Danger might come of it, the success of our undertaking itself might be
imperilled--yet I was glad. I leaned over the vessel's side, and gazed
through the gathering twilight at the fast receding shores, with their
maze of yellow lights. Life had changed for me during the last few weeks.
The old, placid days of content were over; already I was in a new world,
a world of bigger things, where the great game was being played, with the
tense desperateness of those who gamble with life and death. I had not
sought the change! Rather it had been forced upon me. I had no ambitions
to gratify; the old life had pleased me very well. I had quitted it
simply upon compulsion. And here I was with unfamiliar thoughts in my
brain, groping my way along paths which were strange to me, face to face
now with the greatest happening which Heaven or Hell can let loose upon a
man. It was a queer trick this, which fortune had played me.
After all we are very human. The dressing bugle brought me back to
the present, and I remembered that I was hungry. I descended into my
state-room, and found all my things neatly laid out, and Guest sitting on
the opposite bunk regarded them critically.
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