Page:The Wreck of a World - Grove - 1890.djvu/120

104 greyer than at the time of our landing, but otherwise I still enjoyed all the vigour and freshness of healthy manhood.

And in this uneventful but not unhappy existence, unbroken by the scramble of the market or fever of money-getting, in all the quiet and more than the quiet of some remote parish in old England before the age of steam, it seemed likely that we should pass the remainder of our lives.

What was it that whispered to me, contrary to all reasonable probabilities, that we were not yet at the end of our period of Sturm und Drang—that we were merely in an epoch of expectation and waiting, and that more dangers and surprises were in store for us yet? Was it the natural revulsion of an active spirit from the quiet and confinement to which it was now subjected? Perhaps. Yet, maybe from mere coincidence, the whispering voice proved to jump with the facts. Whatever the cause, the events came to pass as follows. Dana had been absent for some weeks on a cruise and was expected to return in the course of a few days, when I was rather surprised by the news, brought by one of the old sailors who formed what