Elsie was disappointed. She dreaded the return to the saloon, with its

queerly assorted company. When she quitted them, they were in a state

of indescribable distress. Gray and the Englishman were helping the

chief steward to adjust life-belts; but Isobel was in a frenzy of

despair, her maid had fainted, de Poincilit and the Spaniards were

muttering alternate appeals to the saints and oaths of utter

abandonment, and Mrs. Somerville was almost unconscious, while her

husband knelt by her side and wrung his hands in abject misery.

Anything was better than to go back to that woful assembly, yet she

choked down a protest and said quietly: "I am ready. I am afraid I have been a bother to you, Captain

Courtenay."

"Say, rather, you have given me hope. I think Heaven has work for you

to do in the world. Let me go out first. Never mind Joey. He can

struggle along behind. Steady now. Head down and lean well against

the wind."

Elsie found, to her amazement, that there was less sense of danger in

facing the wind than in being driven along before it. Moreover, she

had greater confidence during this second transit over the exposed

portion of the deck. She felt Courtenay dragging her on irresistibly

until they gained the lee of the smoking-room. He let her rest there,

beneath the ladder leading to the bridge. Then a strange revulsion of

feeling came to him. He experienced an overwhelming desire not to be

parted from her; he had a sickening fear that he might never see her

again; so he shouted, very close to her cheek: "Would you like to sit in my cabin a little while, if I bring Miss

Baring?"

She thought that would be splendid. Courtenay, if any one, would

succeed in calming Isobel. In order to make herself heard she, in

turn, had to put her lips quite near to Courtenay's face.

"Yes," she cried, "I shall be only too pleased. But be patient with

her; she is very frightened."

There is no accounting for the workings of a man's mind. Courtenay, at

no time a lady's man, most certainly had other matters to attend to

just then. Yet here he was thinking only of a woman's comfort. His

dismal forebodings were banished by a rush of absurd delight at the

thought that he would have an opportunity of speaking to her

occasionally. What a brave girl she was! What a wife for a sailor!

In truth, these were mad notions that jostled in his brain when his

life and her's were not worth an hour's purchase. He drew her to the

foot of the ladder.

"Run ahead, Joey!" he cried. The dog, a weird little figure leaning

forward at a ridiculous angle against the tearing wind, obeyed

instantly. "Now, you," he said to Elsie, "but wait until I pass you at

the top."




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