When the boat had completed its voyage and returned to the wharf opposite the steel arch, the captain emerged from the wheelhouse and joined the passengers who were heading for the gangway and land. He was a grey-haired man of about fifty, wearing a cap emblazoned with the name of the boat. Having noted that Jack and La Grande Sauterelle were speaking French, he came up to them and said that northwest of St. Louis, in St. Charles, the little town where he had been born and still lived, there were a number of Francophones; his neighbours, in fact, were called Blanchette, and he had learned a few words of French when he played with their children as a boy.

To avoid having to repeat once more that he was looking for his brother and all that, Jack asked him a question — the first one that sprang to his mind — about the date on which the caravans used to set out for the Oregon Trail. Why April rather than May? he asked. The captain replied that since the caravans had to cross the Rockies before the first snowfall in autumn, the people took to the road as soon as the grass was high enough to feed the cattle they brought with them, and that was usually in April.

The captain knew a tremendous amount about the Oregon Trail — the route, the wagons, the climate, the Indians, diseases and accidents — and they listened to him with great interest. Finally Jack gathered his courage and asked the question that was uppermost on his mind. He wanted to know what kind of people had decided, in the early 1840s, to give up everything and travel across most of a continent simply because they had heard that the land was good and life was better on the shores of the Pacific. What sort of people had had the courage to do that?

“Ordinary people,” the captain replied.

He took a watch from his jacket pocket and looked at the time, then repeated in French, “Du monde ordinaire.”

“Not adventurers?” asked Jack.

“No.”

“And not bums?”

“Not at all,” said the captain, bringing his hand to his hat in a salute to an elderly lady who stood at the foot of the gangway, holding a poodle and waving a lace handkerchief.

XV

The Deep-Sea
Diver’s Complex

“Feeling better?” she asked.

“So-so,” he said.

“Well then, I think its time for me to play psychologist again . . .”

“Why?”

“Because . . . there are two of us. We’re together. We can’t live as if we were absolutely separate.”

“Mmm, I guess so . . .” he said.

“At least tell me what you’re thinking about.”

They had been travelling along route 70 for four hours and were almost at Kansas City. The girl was driving. As the road was straight and monotonous, she drove in a very relaxed manner, forearms resting on the wheel.

Jack was studying a map of Kansas City, trying to locate the campgrounds listed in an Automobile Club guide.