Well, he wasn't certain. He had a plan, a program. It might come to something worth while. He hoped it would; he believed it would. If he had little faith in the value of much that men struggled for, he still believed in man. But whatever his future might be, it must be one of action. He could never be passive. To dream without doing? To contemplate, with contemplation as an end in itself? No. To be a passionately interested bystander, critical, puzzled, sympathetic, deprecating, uplifted or disgusted according to the momentary mood and impression, to the winnowing of events through the sieve of his intellect, but nevertheless a bystander aloof from the common, troubled stream of life--he could never be that again. He doubted now that he ever had been. He had only thought himself a watcher on the bank. He had been sweeping along in the current unaware. It couldn't be otherwise. He was very tired. When the _Haida_ cleared the outer harbor and met the full strength of a westerly swell in the Gulf he went below and turned in. Daybreak in Ragged Island Pass! A wave of light and color spanning the Gulf, lighting up the snowy peaks oft Vancouver Island. A blend of misty shores, gray-green sea, hills that faded from olive to purple, from purple to delicate lilac and merged with the horizon as faint blue patches far off, on the edge of things. Then the sun stabbing in golden shafts through notches in the Coast Range, hunting black shadows out of every gorge, touching each wave crest with a sparkle. A morning breeze flicked the sea with touches of white, and set the _Haida_ lurching, plunging, flinging fan-shaped bursts of foam off her bows, arching iridescent sheets of spray in which small, elusive rainbows gleamed. At ten in the morning they ran the south narrows of the Euclataw with the ebb an hour gone, rolling, twisting, yawing widely as they sheered off wicked swirls and were shot at last on a straight current between the two Gillards and into the mouth of Mermaid Bay. The house was silent, empty. It was silent and empty enough at best, its quiet corridors flanked by rooms that were never opened, in which ghostly shapes of furniture stood in dim light like swathed mummies. But the rooms they did occupy were empty. Rod went out quietly and sat down on the porch steps. Here presently came Stagg in overalls, his long dark face a healthy brown from self-appointed outdoor tasks. "Mr. and Mrs. Hall and Mrs. Norquay went in the little launch on the morning slack to see the rapids run, sir," he informed Rod. "They weren't expecting you to-day."