"Yes, sir," I replied. "It was my precious father, and he went back home in the little sailboat."
There must have been something to excite suspicion in the way I wrote my name or in my manner. I boldly wrote out my given name and then, as I began to write my last name, I looked all around me, confused, and changed the letter "P" to "C," writing "Corbell." Then I began to erase "Corbell" and write "Phillips," the name in my oath of allegiance. While there was nothing very false in what I did, I felt guilty and was frightened, for I had been brought up to be strictly truthful.
I had not been long in the saloon when baby became restless and fretful. I was impatiently awaiting the coming of the captain, for whom I had sent, when a man appeared. He had short curly hair, deep, heavy eyebrows, eyes sunken and close together as if they had to be focused by his big, hooked nose to enable them to see. He was chewing alternately one end of his crinkly moustache and one side of his thick red lip and was making a sucking noise with his tongue as he said:
"Madam, you sent for the captain of the boat, I believe."
"I want you to be kind enough to get my ticket and stateroom, please," I replied. "My father had only time to put me on board and could not make any arrangements."
"Certainly; with pleasure. You stop in Baltimore long?"
"Oh, no; never. I have been nowhere outside of Virginia and North Carolina. Most of my traveling before my marriage was in going to and from Lynchburg, where I was at school.
"Once I rode on horseback to the Peaks of Otter, which are among the highest mountains of the South. You can't imagine how glorious it was to be up there so far away from the earth. When I first looked down from their lofty heights the sky and the earth seemed to be touching, and presently the rain began to pour. I could see the glimmering, glittering drops, but could not hear them fall. I was above the clouds and the rain, up in the sunshine and stillness, the only audible sound being a strange flapping of wings as the hawks and buzzards flew by. Suddenly the rain ceased, the haze vanished and I saw below the rugged mountains the level country that looked like a vast ocean in the distance.