It looked as though every soul who wasn’t at the first breakfast must be on deck. In this clear and searching light Miss Mar’s traveling companions stood revealed—a strange, an unexampled crew. Scraps of German, of Swedish, of French, and of tongues to which she had no key, floated past her ear. In this new world of the _Los Angeles_, no color line discoverable, no alien labor law in force. Her eye fell upon the cryptic faces of the Japanese, and on familiar types of negro and mulatto, cheek by jowl with lawyers, clergymen, and senators. There were raw, red Irishmen, and overdone brown Hebrews. The captain went by talking broad Scotch to the English doctor, and the pig-tailed crew pulled at the cordage in unison to an uncouth Chinese chant. And never was such sunshine, never shores so green, never before mountain ranges so ethereal, so softly touched with snow or wreathed in cloud. But the people—the people! The girl wandered about, all eyes, or sat in her long chair, for which there was hardly room now on the swarming deck. She held in one hand a little volume in which never a page was turned, for here, moving up and down before her, was matter more wonderful than any history written in any book. The thought she found coming up oftenest: What on earth takes him—or her—to Nome? For Louis, it seems, was in one thing right. Here was no Klondike company of sturdy pioneers, all men of brawn, or Amazonian women. Some such were in the throng, but the majority, weedy clerks and dyspeptic nondescripts. There went a man with only one arm to dig his gold. Several smartly dressed ladies flashed by with an air of being on their way to a garden party. Here was a hollow-chested youth with a corpse-like face, crawling painfully about with the aid of a cane. There were other children besides Curlyhead, and a number of quite old men—one grizzled creature with both feet “club.” What are _they_ going to do in such a place as Nome? Hildegarde seemed to be the only one to wonder. Every face shining, every heart seemed lifted up. One and all were well-assured they had only to see Nome to “obtain joy and gladness.” “Nome is the place,” their faces said, “where sorrow and sighing shall flee away.” Here were the Blumpittys, looking a good deal battered, but he, at least, no gloomier than common, and she beaming like all the rest. Hildegarde got up to greet them. “I looked for you at breakfast.” “We are having ours later,” quoth Mrs. Blumpitty, as one admitting habits luxurious. But since the second table had been summoned some time before it was patent that to be of the Blumpitty party meant you must eat at the third. “Are you comfortable where you are?” inquired the rusty one solicitously.