That night Charley Wyman stayed to supper at Smith’s.

We went along the road all night in the dark and the adjutant kept riding up alongside my kitchen and saying, “You must put it out.”

The night before they were to come back she didn’t sleep at all, that is she didn’t think she slept because it was all mixed up in a dream about not sleeping and really not sleeping.

To her son these words conveyed an extraordinary joy, as if it were settled the expedition were bound to take place, and the wonder to which he had looked forward, for years and years it seemed, was, after a night’s darkness and a day’s sail, within touch.