Then he laughed a strange little laugh that was not at all like Jolly Roger.

“I’ll try and not let you get wet again, Nada,” he said.

Her fingers still held to his thumb, as if she was afraid of losing him there in the blackness that lay about them like a great ink-blotch.  And she crept closer to him, saying nothing, and all the power in his soul fought in Jolly Roger to keep him from putting his arms about her slim little body and crying out the worship that was in him.

“I ain’t—­I mean I’m not afraid of gettin’ wet,” he heard her whisper then.  “You’re so big and strong, Mister Roger—­”

Gently he freed his thumb from her fingers, and picked her up, and held her high, so that she was against his breast and above the deepest of the water.  Lightly at first Nada’s arms lay about his shoulders, but as the flood began to rush higher and she felt him straining against it,—­her arms tightened, until the clasp of them was warm and thrilling round Jolly Roger’s neck.  She gave a big gasp of relief when he stood her safely down upon her feet on the other side.  And then again she reached out, and found his hand, and twined her fingers about his big thumb—­and Jolly Roger went on with her over the plain toward Cragg’s Ridge, dripping wet, just as the rim of the moon began to rise over the edge of the eastern forests.

CHAPTER IV

It seemed an interminable wait to Peter, back in the cabin.  Jolly Roger had put out the light, and when the moon came up the glow of it did not come into the dark room where Peter lay, for the open door was to the west, and curtains were drawn closely at both windows.  But through the door he could see the first mellowing of the night, and after that the swift coming of a soft, golden radiance which swallowed all darkness and filled his world with the ghostly shadows which seemed alive, yet never made a sound.  It was a big, splendid moon this night, and Peter loved the moon, though he had seen it only a few times in his three months of life.  It fascinated him more than the sun, for it was always light when the sun came, and he had never seen the sun eat up darkness, as the moon did.  Its mystery awed him, but did not frighten.  He could not quite understand the strange, still shadows which were always unreal when he nosed into them, and it puzzled him why the birds did not fly about in the moon glow, and sing as they did in the day-time.  And something deep in him, many generations older than himself, made his blood run faster when this thing that ate up darkness came creeping through the sky, and he was filled with a yearning to adventure out into the strange glow of it, quietly and stealthily, watching and listening for things he had never seen or heard.