might be enumerated that of being quartered with next of kin. These men
were Britons. On sea and land her ancestry and the generations thereof
had thrashed them and theirs. On sea and land they would continue to do
so. The traditions of her race clamored for vindication. She was but a
woman of the present, but in her bubbled the whole mighty past. It was
not alone Molly Travis who pulled on gum boots, mackintosh, and straps;
for the phantom hands of ten thousand forbears drew tight the buckles,
just so as they squared her jaw and set her eyes with determination. She,
Molly Travis, intended to shame these Britishers; they, the innumerable
shades, were asserting the dominance of the common race.

The men-folk did not interfere. Once Dick suggested that she take his
oilskins, as her mackintosh was worth no more than paper in such a storm.
But she sniffed her independence so sharply that he communed with his
pipe till she tied the flaps on the outside and slushed away on the
flooded trail.

"Think she'll make it?" Dick's face belied the indifference of his
voice.

"Make it? If she stands the pressure till she gets to the cache, what of
the cold and misery, she'll be stark, raving mad. Stand it? She'll be
dumb-crazed. You know it yourself, Dick. You've wind-jammed round the
Horn. You know what it is to lay out on a topsail yard in the thick of
it, bucking sleet and snow and frozen canvas till you're ready to just
let go and cry like a baby. Clothes? She won't be able to tell a bundle
of skirts from a gold pan or a tea-kettle."

"Kind of think we were wrong in letting her go, then?"