When she opened her eyes Louis was lifting her up. She was not clinging to a berg, nor even sitting on a cake of ice. Still in the noisome little room, and still that throbbing was shaking the ship. The people who had been so quiet were pushing, jostling, shouting, frantic to get— Where? To the boats, of course! All except Louis and Mrs. Locke. Noble souls, they were ready to stay and die with Hildegarde Mar! She must exert herself. “Now I can go.” “There’s no hurry,” says Cheviot. “Oh, yes, come. We must try—we, too.” “Try what?” “Why, to—to save ourselves.” He laughed. “Poor girl, do you feel dreadfully shipwrecked?” “What, then, are they all running for?” She looked round bewildered. “The engines have started. Tide’s nearly flood. Can you walk? That’s right.” They helped her to the deck. Long after midnight—and the world so bright! Oh, the blessing of the pure, cold air! While she breathed it in, O’Gorman stopped to whisper in Cheviot’s ear: “By George, you’ve saved a panic!” “No,” says Cheviot, “it wasn’t my concert.” CHAPTER XXI In those last hours the great body of the floe had swung away to westward. It was the very rear-guard of the outgoing ice that had assisted at the concert. By this unfailing daylight you could see, an hour after midnight, the shining stretch of smooth water that lay between the _Los Angeles_ and the invisible mainland. People hung over the ship’s side to watch the flood-tide swirl and churn under the propeller, while the “old sea tramp,” mustering every pound of energy, struggled to get free. Yes, it was exciting enough, but to the tall girl bending her hatless head over the railing at Cheviot’s side, not half as exciting as certain discoveries she was making without the aid of steam. Not alone in Norton Sound was the tide at flood. She drew closer to her companion with a mingled joy and shyness. Just that little nearer drawing, how strange that it should be the stuff of which so great happiness is made! Was he feeling it, too? Was he realizing? Or was all his soul down there in the turgid water foaming under the propeller’s beat. She remembered enviously how Louis’s little nephew would pat you on the arm if you grew abstracted, and remind you: “I’m here.” She longed to do the same. She even did it in a less direct fashion with the words: “I should think, by the feel of the air, there must be more icebergs on their way down.” “Hard work,” he said, all his sympathies with the propeller. “Brrr!” remarked Hildegarde. “Nearly as much mud as water,” he went on, with equal irrelevance. “It certainly _is_ a great deal colder,” she persisted, as though he had denied that fact. “Less than two fathoms at low tide—” “Brrr! Brrr!” Ah, that had brought him back. From the overcoat he was wearing he hurriedly unbuttoned the tweed cape, and when he got it off put it round Hildegarde’s shoulders. “Are you sure you won’t miss it?” she asked.